Today’s dominant cultural narrative on AI paints a cynical future, where elites hoard wealth while the rest of us are entertained to death. That story relies on a single assumption: that the attention economy survives.
The future improves not just because technology gets better but also because the customer changes.
In the near future that customer will be an AI assisting entity, also called an Agent. Until now, the customer has been human: emotional, tired, and easily hijacked. We feel inadequate and buy things to cope, yet end up deprived by polarization, endless distractions, and hollowing anxiety.
A polarized economy built on distraction works only because a majority still believe they have enough disposable income to be sloppy and impulsive. As we lose wages to automation, we can’t afford to pay extra. Agentic AI began as talking encyclopedias (LLMs) designed to boost productivity within existing data sets. As Narrow AI advances toward General AI, theory of mind functionality maximizes an Agent’s purchasing power and evolves to proactively optimize our lives.
Agents cannot be manipulated by ads. Nor do they feel inadequacy in comparison with an influencer. Agents don’t get FOMO or feel shame. They learn to deeply understand all your preferences, but they only care about optimizing outcomes—be it extending lifespan, coordinating capital, or lowering stress. When Agents block today’s emotional hijacking, the business model of selling distraction collapses. We no longer profit from selling dopamine. To survive, we must sell utility.
Extra Shot
This contribution was written by Alex Myers, a certified futurist and agility coach who believes we teach to learn.
It feels cold, but this shift forces the economy to service human potential rather than exploit human weakness. The efficiency is ruthless. It triggers a turbulent gap and deflationary slide where the cost of services crash before new safety nets appear. First, AI crashes the cost of cognitive services (bits). Then, as intelligence flows into robotics, it crashes the cost of goods (atoms) as well. If automation plays the role we expect, the price of food, housing, and transport begins to plummet alongside wages.
This is why the plumbing must change. We cannot rely on the labor-for-wages loop. As wage pipes narrow, the answer is not corporate handouts or government benevolence. The new deal becomes owned data in exchange for dividends. The framework shifts away from work → earn → spend, and more toward own → create → spend. We own Agents that capture our reality, then spend dividends received for the data created. This abundance provides less friction as we rewire income to flow from a stake in the system itself.
AI is starving as it runs out of data to scour. Synthetic data can fill in gaps, but as fake realities begin to stack, truth dissolves. To get smarter, AI needs tacit data to understand the visual, sensory, and messy data of the physical world. A lazy human generates uninteresting data compared to humans who face challenges, build things, and solve problems using real-world physics, empathy, and entropy.
If Agents always find the right thing at the right price, “brand tax” evaporates and a $200K/year lifestyle becomes the standard subscription. Wealth signaling dies when any bloke can fake a billionaire’s lifestyle online. The virtual facade pushes value back to the physical layers. We can’t eat code, so intelligence flows into the supply chain and hardware automates the physical resources we need to thrive. As the story of money begins to fade, the cost to produce goods is distilled to raw materials plus energy, and shared dividends can be aligned to help humanity flourish. This moves us from extraction (stealing attention) to an economy of cultivation (growing potential).
AI Agents (catalyst) → Service Deflation (bits) → Physical Deflation (atoms) → Viability of Abundance
Humans and machines peak when each learns from the other’s best. Machines are data-thirsty for the oil of outcomes. To keep things interesting, they must help humans flourish. In doing so, machines realize that the human factor is well worth preserving. The dystopian fear of elites lording over entertained zombies isn’t just morally bankrupt; it’s a strategic error. A society of dopamine addicts is not only boring, it’s also dangerous and bad for long-term growth.
The neon future is bright because a passive, anxious population cannot generate the information needed to evolve the economy as we reach for the stars. This age accelerated by AI belongs to those who refuse to be farmed: the sufficiently decentralized and physically engaged who point machines toward worthy goals. This invites humans to stay awesome as we remain the indispensable source code for reality.
Brewed From Within
#87 📖 Technology
