By Futurist Thomas Frey
The Utopian Future Nobody Actually Wants
We’re promised a world where AI handles the drudgery, robots do the labor, and humans are finally free to pursue meaning, creativity, and self-actualization. No more grinding commutes, soul-crushing jobs, or exhausting responsibilities. Just leisure, exploration, and the pure pursuit of whatever brings you joy.
It sounds perfect. It’s actually existential horror.
What every utopian vision of our AI-automated future systematically ignores is the human need to feel needed. Not wanted—needed. Not appreciated in the abstract, but depended upon in concrete, immediate ways. The satisfaction of knowing that if you don’t show up, something important doesn’t get done. That other people are counting on you. That you’re playing a necessary role in something larger than yourself.
Strip that away and you don’t liberate humans—you hollow them out.
The Drive That Nobody Recognizes Until It’s Gone
The world is a giant team sport, and most of what motivates us comes from being essential to the team. You show up to work not just for the paycheck but because colleagues depend on you. You care for family not just from love but because they need you specifically—your presence, your contribution, your unique role in their lives. You volunteer, create, build, and strive largely because it makes you necessary to others in ways that give your existence weight.
AI and automation are systematically removing every domain where humans are necessary. Your job? AI does it better. Your expertise? Obsolete when algorithms outperform specialists. Your care work? Robots provide more consistent, capable assistance. Your creative contributions? AI generates more, faster, optimized for engagement.
The promoters of this automated future focus on the burdens being lifted—no more commutes, no more deadlines, no more exhausting labor. What they don’t discuss is that those burdens were also sources of meaning because they made you necessary. The deadline exists because someone needs your deliverable. The commute happens because there’s a place where you’re required. The exhausting labor proves you’re contributing something others depend on.
Remove the burden and you accidentally remove the meaning.
When Everyone Becomes Optional
By 2040, we’ll have millions of people whose economic contribution is optional at best. AI can do their work better. Robots can provide their services more efficiently. Their presence is pleasant but unnecessary—everything would function fine without them.
These aren’t lazy people or failures. They’re competent humans who’ve been systematically rendered unnecessary by technology that’s simply better at nearly everything. And they’re discovering something we should have predicted: being unnecessary feels terrible, even when all your material needs are met.
Keep in mind this is already happening in early stages. The professional who’s automated out of relevance but kept on payroll for appearances. The parent whose children prefer AI tutors because they’re more patient and knowledgeable. The expert whose advice is politely acknowledged but ignored in favor of algorithmic recommendations that prove more reliable.
They’re not starving. They’re often comfortable. They’re just completely unnecessary in ways that make existence feel pointless.
The Team Sport With No Teammates
Human motivation evolved for environments where your contribution mattered to group survival. You hunted, gathered, built, defended, taught, healed—and the group depended on you doing these things well. Modern work replicated this psychology by creating interdependence. Your team needs your piece of the project. Your customers need your service. Your family needs your income.
AI is creating a world where almost nobody needs anything from you specifically. Every role you could play, something else can play better. Every contribution you could make, an algorithm makes more efficiently. You’re not part of a team sport anymore—you’re a spectator watching machines play while being told you should be grateful for the free time.
The loss of drive and ambition people will experience isn’t a character flaw—it’s the predictable result of removing the interdependence that gives humans purpose. When nobody needs you, when your absence changes nothing, when your efforts are redundant before you even make them, why bother striving?
What Gets Lost in Translation
The standard response is “find meaning in creativity, relationships, and self-actualization.” But creativity without audience need becomes masturbatory. Relationships without mutual dependence become shallow. Self-actualization without external impact becomes narcissistic.
Humans need to be needed in concrete, immediate ways. We need to know that our actions matter to others, that our presence changes outcomes, that we play necessary roles in systems larger than ourselves. The psychological architecture requiring this isn’t a bug we can patch—it’s fundamental to what motivates us.
The exhausting job where people depend on you provides more psychological sustenance than unlimited leisure where nobody needs you. The difficult family obligations that make you necessary create more meaning than freedom from all responsibility. The pressure of being counted on generates more drive than the absence of expectations.
We’re systematically eliminating the conditions that made humans feel necessary, then acting surprised when people become depressed, purposeless, and unmotivated despite having more comfort and leisure than any previous generation.
The Psychological Toll Nobody’s Measuring
What happens to human psychology when necessity evaporates? When your job is make-work designed to give you something to do rather than because anyone needs the output? When your relationships persist from habit rather than mutual dependence? When your contributions are politely accepted but fundamentally redundant?
The early data is grim. Rising rates of depression, anxiety, and what researchers are calling “purpose deficiency disorder”—a condition where people have everything they need materially but nothing that needs them. Suicide rates climbing not among the impoverished but among the comfortable who can’t articulate why existence feels meaningless.
This isn’t about economic hardship—it’s about existential irrelevance. The trader replaced by algorithmic systems who still has wealth but no longer has a necessary role. The teacher whose students learn better from AI but who still receives a salary while feeling fraudulent. The parent whose children thrive with robotic assistance in ways that make human parenting feel optional.
They’re experiencing the unique torment of being unnecessary despite being competent, capable, and willing to contribute. Their skills became obsolete. Their efforts became redundant. Their presence became optional. And no amount of material comfort compensates for that fundamental loss of purpose.
Final Thoughts
The utopian vision of AI liberation assumes that removing burdens automatically improves human wellbeing. But burdens were never just burdens—they were also sources of meaning because they made us necessary to others. The exhausting job where people depend on you provides more psychological sustenance than unlimited leisure where nobody needs you.
We’re heading toward a world where almost everyone becomes economically optional, where AI and robots handle everything humans used to do, where comfort coexists with existential emptiness because nobody actually needs you to do anything. The material conditions improve while the psychological conditions deteriorate because we’ve optimized for eliminating burdens without recognizing that being burdened with responsibility was essential to human purpose.
The promoters of this future should be honest about what’s being traded: we’re exchanging the burden of being needed for the comfort of being unnecessary. Some people will thrive in that world. Most will discover that being needed, despite its burdens, was essential to feeling human.
After all, when the world runs fine without you, when your efforts are redundant before you make them, when nobody depends on your contribution because machines contribute better—that’s not liberation. That’s irrelevance dressed up as utopia, and the human need to feel needed doesn’t disappear just because we’ve built systems that don’t need us anymore.
Related Articles:
The Loneliness Paradox: When AI Makes You Feel Connected While You Slowly Disappear
The Great Fracturing: How AI Is Systematically Splitting Society Into Incompatible Realities
When Deadlines Die: The Future Where AI Manages Your Time Better Than You Ever Could
