AI Abundance and the Scarcity of Soul
to those tech-aware, meaning-hungry readers like you
The Road to Infinite Abundance
We are entering a new era—one where the limits we once assumed were fixed are being dissolved by artificial intelligence.
In this era, intelligence itself is scaling. AI models grow more powerful not by chance, but by law. Feed them more compute, more data, and more parameters, and they get smarter—faster. This has become known as the scaling law of AI, and it’s not just theoretical: it's shaping every frontier of innovation.
Figure: AI capabilities grow predictably with compute.
This scaling law is leading us toward something unprecedented: systems with effectively infinite capacity across every human domain. Four converging trends define this moment:
This scaling law is leading us toward what may soon feel like infinite capacity:
Infinite content — generated faster than humans can consume it
Infinite productivity — work done instantly, in parallel, across tasks
Infinite creativity — images, voices, stories conjured on demand
Infinite scalability — products, companies, even relationships replicated without friction
AI is no longer just a tool; it’s becoming infrastructure. And when infrastructure becomes intelligent, everything that can be automated will be—at scale, at speed, at minimal cost.
The web, once a collection of human artifacts, is transforming into a synthetic mirror that constantly reflects and reshapes our preferences. The interfaces we use to code, design, write, and plan are merging into AI copilots. Soon, entire companies—customer service, design, marketing, legal—will run with skeleton crews and intelligent agents.
And this isn’t speculative. It’s already happening across four major frontiers:
🧠 Intelligent Code Generation
Tools like GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini now write entire applications. Founders in recent YC batches report building MVPs in days, not months—95% of the code written by AI. Products like Cursor and Replit are already reshaping how engineers work.
As Tom Blomfield notes, “coding agents” may soon outperform the top 0.1% of developers. This doesn’t just affect tech teams—it rewrites the structure of value creation itself.
When AI codes, it doesn’t just accelerate building—it redefines who can build.
🤖 Autonomous Agents and Task Runners
AI agents now act. They search, synthesize, schedule, transact. And as Alex Danco points out, their greatest potential may not lie inside firms—but between them: in open markets, onchain protocols, and highly composable interactions.
The back office is becoming a back algorithm. The firm is being outflanked by the edge.
⚙️ Automated Enterprises
The modern company is hollowing out. Design, marketing, ops, customer success—whole stacks are being automated. AI doesn’t just assist—it increasingly replaces functions that were once core.
Yet as Danco notes, in this Red Queen’s Race of startups sprinting to differentiate, almost all the value is ending up in consumer surplus, not sustainable business moats. Abundance lowers costs—but it also commodifies creation.
Optimization becomes erasure. Human roles don’t just evolve—they dissolve.
🦾 Embodied Intelligence
AI is gaining a body. From Tesla’s Optimus to Figure AI’s humanoids, software is becoming physical. Robotic arms in warehouses. Voice agents embedded in glasses. Drone coordination with language models.
This isn’t science fiction—it’s just the next domain being made abundant.
First it learned to write. Now it’s learning to reach.
Meanwhile, at the political level, as Yoni Rechtman writes, abundance isn’t just economic—it’s moral and civic. It offers a chance to break free from fear-based governance, zero-sum logic, and regressive nostalgia. But only if society reclaims ambition, capacity, and a collective moral compass. If not, abundance will only widen divisions and hollow out trust.
These trends point to something exhilarating—and disorienting.
Because if machines can learn everything, do anything, and speak in our voices—what’s left that’s truly ours?
It’s not just a matter of job loss or productivity shifts. It’s a deeper question of value. In a world where output becomes infinite, what still has meaning?
We are gaining capacity—and losing comprehension.
We are scaling systems—and drifting from self.
We are generating more—and grounding less.
Let me share a moment that struck me deeply.
When OpenAI announced their text-to-image profile feature, it didn’t take long—my LinkedIn feed transformed almost overnight. One by one, profile pictures were replaced by AI-generated portraits. Some were subtle upgrades; others looked nothing like the original person.
The unsettling part wasn’t the quality of the images. It was the feeling—like a thin membrane had formed between me and reality. A layer of unreality had slipped in, casually, frictionlessly. It was just one product update. One tool. But it instantly reshaped how thousands of people showed up in the world.
And that’s when it hit me:
This wasn’t the metaverse.
It was just LinkedIn.
And yet… it already felt one step closer to a generated world.
That was just one feature.
There are hundreds more.
Thousands more coming.
Which leads to a more haunting question:
In this age of infinite intelligence and infinite output, is the meaning of our lives still bounded by the limits of our soul?
This is not a technological question. It’s a human one.
And if we don’t ask it now, the machines won’t ask it for us.
As we push toward this AI-powered abundance—unprecedented in speed, scale, and capability—we must ask what lies beneath the surface. If everything becomes frictionless, what becomes of the friction that once formed us? What happens when the world becomes instantly responsive, but our souls remain unanswered?
The Soul’s Decline in the Shadow of Progress
Throughout history, technology has promised empowerment—but often delivered fragmentation. Each breakthrough has reshaped how we live, work, and connect. But in the process, something sacred has slowly eroded.
The Industrial Revolution mechanized labor but also alienated workers from the meaning of their craft. The internet democratized access to knowledge but overwhelmed us with noise. Social media gave everyone a voice but made identity performative. Remote work gave us flexibility—but at the cost of human presence.
Now, artificial intelligence threatens to take this pattern further than ever before. We are not only facing job displacement—but purpose erosion. Not only productivity surges—but spiritual numbness.
A Historical Descent
The Industrial Age separated labor from meaning
The Internet Age replaced scarcity with excess, but clarity with confusion
The AI Age is poised to replace not just work, but human relationships, attention, and even reflection
Each wave claimed to bring us freedom. And in some ways, it did. But each wave also built new walls:
The smartphone made us always reachable—but never fully present
Remote work removed commutes—but erased the workplace rituals that once gave rhythm and camaraderie
Social media made us visible—but lonelier, more anxious, and less grounded
Now AI threatens to:
Strip meaning from labor
Fragment truth into personalized realities
Simulate intimacy and replace it with interaction
The Modern Symptoms
As Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning, wrote:
"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for."
This insight rings truer than ever in an age of AI-generated abundance. What does this erosion look like today?
Widening wealth and knowledge gaps driven by unequal access to AI tools
Mental health crises worsened by overstimulation, digital disembodiment, and algorithmic manipulation
Status confusion as traditional markers of value and expertise collapse
Truth relativism, where belief becomes entertainment and fact loses its anchor
But beneath these trends lie deeper human longings—ones that no machine can fulfill:
A desire to be truly seen, not scanned or sorted
In a world mediated by artificial interfaces, we often feel more analyzed than understood. Endless data streams offer predictions and profiles, yet the substance of human connection—the authentic seeing and being seen—is obscured. We’re flooded with information, but starved for clarity. Decision-making becomes paralyzing when everything feels curated, yet nothing feels true.
A fear of being replaceable, in work and in love
As everything from job roles to digital personas becomes interchangeable, a quiet anxiety grows: what if we, too, are just another variable in the system? Relationships become provisional. Friendships feel conditional. And as temporary connections dominate, the ability to bond deeply with another soul—to trust, to stay—feels increasingly out of reach.
A longing for love that doesn’t expire or turn transactional
In an age of swipes, subscriptions, and shallow attention, fewer people seem willing—or able—to pursue lasting, committed love. Emotional caution replaces vulnerability. Relationships become exchanges, not covenants. And yet beneath all the detachment, many are still silently longing: for love that doesn’t fade with novelty, that endures beyond utility, that is chosen again and again.
These are soul-level needs. And they cannot be answered by productivity tools or synthetic companionships. When technology offers us everything but meaning, we risk forgetting who we are.
This is not just about external disruption. It's about internal decay—a kind of existential vacuum that Frankl described as the root of modern despair:
"When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure." A generation may grow up hyperproductive but hollow. Abundant in stimulation but impoverished in spirit.
Futhermore, beneath all this lies a deeper loss: the decline of interdependency.
As technological progress increasingly glorifies individual autonomy and self-sufficiency, it diminishes something far more essential—our human interdependence. We were not designed to function as isolated agents. We are created with a longing for the other half of ourselves, and our fulfillment is deeply relational—in families, in communities, in society.
The consequences of forgetting this truth are everywhere. Young people hesitate to marry not only because of economic uncertainty, but because they’ve been trained to view relationships as burdens rather than necessities. The desire to even interact with others—let alone rely on them—fades. But what we’ve been sold as independence is often just loneliness in disguise.
Interdependency is not a weakness to evolve past. It is the foundation of meaning.
As AI-generated abundance grows, the danger isn't merely economic displacement. It's existential erosion. When machines can provide anything, but no one needs anyone, the result isn’t freedom—it’s detachment. And detachment is the gateway to despair.
To recover the soul beneath the shadow of progress, we must reclaim our interdependence—not as a concession to old norms, but as a defiant reassertion of what it means to be human.
And perhaps worst of all, this decline is quiet. No riots. No revolutions. Just the subtle drift of people forgetting how to feel, connect, or believe.
This is the spiritual cost of convenience. The price of comfort without anchoring.
We may soon see human beings walking through life with unimaginable tools in their hands—AI agents, real-time companions, creative engines—yet wandering the streets like spiritual zombies. These hollow beings, disconnected from meaning and adrift in distraction, are not what God created us to be.
The future will diverge. Some will become ever more lost in algorithmic illusions and personalized truths. But others—those who anchor themselves in the everlasting truth of the Creator—will walk with clarity, purpose, and peace. The question is not which tools we hold, but whether our soul is still held by something eternal.
As Jesus asked, more than two thousand years ago:
"What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" (Mark 8:36)
That question has never felt more urgent.
We mapped our ascent into technological abundance and also revealed the hollow trail we’ve left behind.
Yet decline is not destiny. If abundance has hollowed our foundations, it also invites us to rebuild—deliberately, spiritually, humanly. The road ahead does not demand rejection of AI, but the recovery of the soul that must guide it.
The Revival of Soul in the Age of Machines
Abundance does not automatically bring fulfillment.
(Copyrights for these feet and legs are… pending. Proceed with grace.)
Let me share one of the few moments each week when I feel fully human. I host a group hike—something simple, unoptimized. We gather in the parking lot, strangers or near-strangers, and introduce ourselves. Then we walk. For hours we talk about random topics - work, society, politics, life, etc.. Phones are tucked away. AI isn’t present. But humanity is. By the end of the trail, we remember who we are - not as users or nodes, but as souls in motion. That kind of connection, that kind of presence, cannot be simulated. It must be lived. In fact, when it comes without wisdom, it often accelerates emptiness. The challenge before us is not to reject AI, but to remember who we are in its presence.
We must begin by acknowledging the power of these tools—but refusing to deify them. AI is not a god. It is not a substitute for presence, love, or truth. It can simulate insight, but it cannot offer wisdom. It can generate beauty, but it cannot create meaning.
To navigate what’s ahead, we need to reclaim five unshakeable truths:
Our identity is above our utility. AI may simulate tasks we once saw as core to our worth, but it can never capture the fullness of who we are. Everything essential about us—our conscience, our capacity for love, our moral will—remains outside the bounds of machine replication.
Our relationships with fellow human beings are our most precious asset. In a world saturated by intelligent interfaces, real human presence becomes more valuable, not less. To see and be seen, to know and be known—these are irreplaceable.
Our soul is our uniqueness. It is not something to be optimized or replicated, but something to be pursued, enriched, and matured. The pursuit of a rich soul is the most important task each life is given.
We were created to wield tools—not to be deceived by them. The awe of AI’s capabilities must not lure us into spiritual delusion. Our Creator made us with the ability to shape tools like AI—but never to believe that such tools define or complete us. The ultimate power lies not in what we create, but in who created us.
Without purpose, we are no more than code or clay. Strip away meaning, and what’s left of a human life? A collection of atoms, or a stream of inputs and outputs. But we were made for something greater: to live with intention, to love with sacrifice, and to seek truth that endures. We were made for wonder. For compassion. For eternity. When we center our lives around the source of life itself, technology finds its rightful place: as servant, not master.
This moment is not a crisis to fear, but a calling to heed. The future is not yet written. We stand at the edge of extraordinary power—and extraordinary responsibility.
Let us choose to build a society not just rich in data, but rich in soul. Let us raise a generation that knows how to use tools—but also how to kneel in humility, how to sit in silence, and how to love what cannot be calculated.
Because when the noise grows louder, what will matter most is not the size of our models—but the stillness of our spirit.
"You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." — C.S. Lewis
Now you are a soul with AI. That’s all.
We may soon have AI in every room, every task, every thought. But in the silence between prompts, the soul still waits to be heard.
Having read extensively about AI and abundance, I felt the need to bring it all together. This piece is my attempt to do just that, because without the soul in the loop, none of it truly has life.
Grateful to Pastor Ran for his insight, and to the many friends who shared thoughtful conversations with me on this topic.
Written with the help of ChatGPT-4o.