If AI Does Everything, What Is Value?

By Ryan Gartrell

Artificial intelligence promises abundance, efficiency, and transformation. But it also threatens to strip human labor of value, and with it the foundations of politics, identity, and democracy. What, then, will remain worth anything in a world where machines can do everything?

The Shock of the Possible

One of the great myths of modernity is that there will always be something left for humans to do.

When textile machines displaced the artisans of England two centuries ago, the Luddites smashed looms. Their fears were dismissed as shortsighted. Industrial progress, they were told, would create new work. And it did: factory floors, railroads, and later, office towers absorbed millions of displaced farmers and weavers.

But today’s revolution is not about machines replacing muscles. It is about machines replacing minds.

A lawyer recently relied on an AI system to draft a brief. The document was indistinguishable from the work of a seasoned associate. A radiologist admitted that the machine now reads her scans more accurately than she can, in a fraction of the time. In a New York advertising firm, a single AI tool generates fifty versions of a campaign before lunch, work that once occupied a team of art directors for weeks.

The difference is stark. In past revolutions, workers migrated into new industries. When agriculture mechanized, millions went to cities to work in factories. When factories automated, they moved into offices. But what if the office is no longer safe?

What if there is nowhere left to move?

This is the haunting question now looming over our politics, our economics, and our identity. It is no longer speculative science fiction. It is about the very near future.

The Collapse of the Old Contract

For centuries, society has rested on a simple bargain: labor in exchange for wages, wages in exchange for survival.

It is not only an economic arrangement; it is the foundation of dignity. What do you do? is often the first question asked at a party, shorthand for status and identity.

But what happens when machines do all the labor?

The cracks are already visible. Call centers in Manila are being replaced by conversational AI. A mid-tier law firm in Chicago quietly cut a third of its paralegals after adopting AI review tools. Journalists now compete with algorithms that can generate readable prose in seconds.

Every previous industrial revolution replaced tasks. A tractor took away plowing but not harvesting. A calculator eliminated arithmetic drudgery but not the accountant. AI is different. It targets judgment, analysis, and creativity themselves—the very qualities that once defined us.

And when labor has no value, the wage economy collapses.

Who Owns the Machines, Owns the Future

The problem is not just mass joblessness. It is the concentration of wealth in the hands of those who own the machines.

In the past, workers could resist. They had unions, strikes, and political leverage. But if AI eliminates the need for workers altogether, what leverage remains?

Value flows upward. The profits go to corporations that own the algorithms, the servers, and the oceans of data.

Imagine an AI system that designs, builds, markets, and distributes a new smartphone with minimal human input. Who profits? Not the assembly-line worker—her job is gone. Not the marketing assistant—his role is redundant. The profits flow to the small circle of corporations that control the machine itself.

In America, that circle is Microsoft, Google, Amazon. In China, Baidu, Tencent, Huawei. In both cases, the effect is the same: an oligopoly that owns the future.

This is not merely an economic issue. It is geopolitical. Will nation-states remain sovereign when corporations control the means of all future production? Or will AI itself become the new oil—the commodity that decides the global balance of power?

What Is Currency When Work Vanishes?

If work collapses, what becomes of money?

For centuries, money has been tethered to human productivity. Wages reflect the value of time and effort. Profits reflect the value of organized labor. Scarcity underpins it all: a diamond is precious not because it is useful, but because it is rare. A loaf of bread is valuable not simply because it sustains life, but because producing it requires effort.

But what happens in a world where AI can design diamonds, bake bread, and compose symphonies at negligible cost?

Some argue that abundance will make money obsolete. But human beings are wired to seek status, and status depends on scarcity. Which means new forms of value will emerge.

• Authenticity: A hand-carved chair, a human-written poem, a meal cooked by a person may become luxury goods.
• Attention: Already the most contested resource of the internet age, human attention may become the true currency, parceled out to the highest bidder.
• Community and Experience: When goods lose meaning, shared experience becomes the rarest commodity of all.

The irony is sharp: in a world of machine-made abundance, the one thing that may retain value is the human touch.

The Policy Fork in the Road

If AI produces wealth without labor, governments must decide how—or whether—to redistribute that wealth.

Universal basic income is the most discussed solution: a monthly stipend for every citizen, funded by taxes on AI profits. Others propose universal basic services: guaranteed food, shelter, health care, and education. Some advocate sovereign wealth funds, modeled on Alaska’s oil dividend, where AI profits flow into public trusts.

But each option carries risks.

• UBI could inflate prices without restoring dignity. A check is not a substitute for purpose.
• Basic services risk bureaucratic stagnation.
• Doing nothing risks immiseration and unrest.

Case studies offer both hope and caution. Finland’s UBI trial improved well-being but did little for employment. Stockton, California, showed cash transfers stabilize families but cannot fix inequality. China has chosen a different path: social stability through surveillance and control rather than redistribution.

The United States, meanwhile, debates copyright lawsuits and chatbots while ignoring the larger crisis. Political paralysis almost guarantees that action will come too late.

The Meaning Crisis

Beyond economics lies a deeper question: Who are we without work?

For centuries, labor has been identity. The Protestant ethic enshrined it as moral duty. The American Dream made it the ladder of advancement. To “make something of yourself” meant to work.

But if work vanishes, identity falters.

Psychologists warn that long-term unemployment erodes the psyche, fueling despair, alienation, extremism. Millions of people rendered permanently redundant may not quietly accept their obsolescence.

There are possible paths forward. Religion may reassert itself as a source of meaning. Nationalism and tribalism may surge. Or societies might choose better: to elevate art, care, and civic life as new measures of value.

The optimistic future is a Sabbath extended to all humanity—a civilization freed from drudgery to pursue higher ends. The pessimistic future is bread and circuses: a population pacified by opioids, virtual reality, and endless streams of machine-generated entertainment.

In both cases, the machine has won. The question is whether humanity emerges diminished or transcendent.

A Choice, Not a Destiny

Artificial intelligence is not destiny. It is a choice.

The systems we build reflect the values we embed. If we choose efficiency above all, AI will strip us of purpose. If we choose profit above all, AI will strip us of equality. But if we choose dignity, connection, and meaning, then AI may yet liberate us.

The future will not be decided by machines. It will be decided by whether we can summon the political courage, the social imagination, and the moral clarity to redefine value on our own terms.

The machines are not asking these questions. We are.

And that may be the one truth that still separates us from them: the ability to decide, together, what it means to be human.

Ryan Gartrell is a writer and consultant focusing on technology and the future of work. He developed Lean AI®, a methodology that helps organizations harness artificial intelligence for growth and efficiency.