ON MEANING IN THE AGE OF AI

What Human Value Will Be When Machines Do More Than Us

The world is changing faster than we can process. Machines write poems, design code, drive cars, make diagnoses. What was once science fiction is now an everyday headline.

The question beneath all of this isn’t only technical. It’s existential. If machines can do more than us—faster, cheaper, sometimes better—what will human value be?

History offers one answer. Each technological revolution has displaced roles and created new ones. The loom replaced weavers, but new industries emerged. The computer replaced clerks, but opened an entire digital world. We adapt.

But this time feels different. AI doesn’t just automate tasks. It mimics imagination. It learns patterns, finds meaning, generates novelty. It reaches into the very space we once considered uniquely ours.

And so the deeper question isn’t about jobs. It’s about meaning.

If our worth is measured only in productivity, machines will outpace us. If our value is defined by output, we’ll always fall behind.

But maybe that’s the invitation. To remember that meaning has never been measured in efficiency. It lives in the things machines can’t hold: presence, embodiment, love, creativity born not of data but of lived experience.

A machine can compose a melody. But only a human can feel the silence before the note, or the ache it stirs in memory.

A machine can generate a plan. But only a human can stand at a threshold—grief, sobriety, loss, love—and choose with courage.

In my work with clients, this is where the real questions surface. What makes life enough? What story are you living? What do you want to pass on? These questions will never be outsourced. They are uniquely, unavoidably human.

AI will change our systems. But it cannot carry our meaning. That remains ours to create, to live, to embody.

So perhaps the question of this age is not: What can machines do?

But: What will we choose to make of being human?

Because in the end, meaning is not found in the race to keep up. It’s found in the courage to live what only we can.