This post was written in response to this post from Adeo Ressi asking if we were “one keystroke away from being rats in a maze with AI”. Like the internet was before it, AI is the next great equalizer. It's important that we maintain equal access to its power so that we can collectively harness it to create the future that we want. None of us wants to be a rat in a maze. So what do we want to be?

To me, that is the great question of being human. Answering it is the continuous journey of a conscious life. We have this remarkable ability to pause in the present and ask such questions to determine our future instead of reacting to it. We can create. If we don't come together to collectively decide how we want our future to look, we may end up reacting to walls in a maze.Or we could imagine something better. Imagine that productivity continues to soar. Production becomes humanless. We've done it - we've navigated the maze. We won the rat race. We have the power to have our basic needs continuously met with little strife. One question remains: what do we want to be?

My ideal future is one where we all have the time to ponder and pursue that question. I believe every person has a desire to work, to create, and produce value for others. Too often what we want to create isn't a viable path within the limited economic system we developed. A system whose core principles, which have barely changed for centuries, have immense power but also glaring limitations.

I don't know how exactly the system will work (one example would be UBI), but I think we can agree on what we want it to feel like. We don't want it to be a maze. The path shouldn't be predetermined and confusing. It should be created by you, intuitively. The metaphor I imagine instead of a maze is a workshop. A place were people have all the tools they want to create whatever you want.

If you dream of a future like the one I do, please follow my journey and see how you can help. I'm trying to create a prototype of a future economic system like this. I rarely talk about Sonora in that way because eyes usually glaze over. But if you made it this far - maybe you'll want to go a little deeper.

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