Trust and the Human Experience: Imagine a World without Work (Purpose)!

By Luke Soon | AI Ethicist & Human Experience Futurist

We often talk about AI as a tool to enhance productivity, accelerate decisions, or simplify life. But what if that’s only the beginning? What if AI is not just helping us do things faster — but quietly erasing the very need to do them at all?

Welcome to the age of Agentic AI — systems that don’t merely respond to prompts, but proactively sense, plan, decide, and act on our behalf. The implications for how we define trust, purpose, and the human experience are profound.

When the Journey Disappears

Traditionally, the Human Experience (HX) was shaped by two major arenas: Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX). Both were underpinned by Jobs to Be Done — functional, emotional, and social tasks we needed help to accomplish. Whether it was opening a bank account, applying for a job, or booking a holiday, we engaged in journeys made up of episodic steps and sub-tasks.

But what happens when the journey collapses into a single moment?

Let’s take a simple, yet universal example: booking international travel.

How Agentic AI Reshapes a Familiar Process

Then – The Human-Led Journey:

Research flights Compare options Check visa requirements Book accommodation Sort transfers, insurance, and currency

Each step required cognition, decision-making, and anticipation — it was as much about preparation as participation.

Now – The Agentic AI Way:

“Plan me a trip to Seoul in November.”

Within seconds, your AI handles everything. You don’t think. You don’t compare. You just arrive — both at the outcome and the destination.

So Where Do Humans Fit In?

As AI removes our need to do, we are left to decide how we wish to be.

The locus of human value shifts from process to presence.

Human-to-human interactions — empathy, joy, discovery — concentrate in moments that machines can’t replicate:

Shared wonder Emotional resonance Cultural communion Personal growth

AI may give us outcomes. But meaning is still handcrafted — and human.

Trust as Existential Infrastructure

This evolution brings trust to the forefront — not in AI’s performance, but in what it permits.

Do I trust this system to return my cognitive and emotional bandwidth?

To give me back the space to wonder, imagine, and grow?

Trust becomes not a metric, but a mindset. Not compliance, but liberation.

Do We Even Need to Trust Machines?

Yuval Noah Harari reminds us that the issue is not trusting AI per se — but why we are so quick to do so, when we struggle to trust each other.

Nations are currently locked in an AI arms race, a classic prisoner’s dilemma:

They know the risks of pushing too far, too fast — including misinformation, mass surveillance, and extinction. Yet they push ahead anyway, afraid of being left behind. Cooperation is possible — and we’ve done it before (e.g. global supply chains, nuclear arms control, climate protocols). But the stakes are now different: we are extending trust not to a human adversary, but to an entirely alien intelligence.

The New Human Experience: When All Tasks Are Done for Us

Let’s imagine a world where work is no longer required.

Climate, energy, disease, transport — all handled by AI-led coordination.

Personal chores — automated.

Professional tasks — delegated.

Decision-making — outsourced.

What then?

From Scarcity to Abundance

Old paradigm: Survival depends on labour.

New paradigm: Survival is guaranteed by design.

Wars for resources, geopolitical tensions over water or oil — become irrelevant in a world where:

AI models manage sustainable energy Climate is balanced by atmospheric engineering Scarcity is algorithmically prevented

Daily Life Without Tasks

You wake up. No alarms — your AI knows your sleep cycles.

Breakfast is ready — tailored to your health, your mood, your ethics.

Your child’s lesson? Delivered through a multisensory time travel simulation.

You ask, “How can I contribute today?”

AI offers three suggestions aligned to your skills and community need.

You choose one — not because you must — but because it feels meaningful.

What Is Still Exposed to Humans?

Even when tasks are automated, four things remain profoundly human:

The Insanity of Our Time

Humans evolved trust over thousands of years — through shared stories, rituals, markets, and moral frameworks.

But AI is not human. It doesn’t have empathy. It doesn’t share our goals. It is not bound by biological limits or evolutionary pressures.

And yet, we are now choosing to place more faith in the outputs of machines than in the intentions of fellow nations or citizens.

As Harari warns, AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions, create narratives, and improve itself — without needing us.

We are building a system with its own momentum, logic, and incentives — but no guaranteed alignment with our species.

Organic evolution took millions of years to shape human intelligence.

Digital evolution is millions of times faster.

And unlike us, it doesn’t need to sleep, heal, or reproduce biologically.

This is quadruple exponential change — scale, speed, depth, and autonomy.

Shared Superintelligence: From Picasso to Lucy

If AI gives everyone +200 to +400 IQ points — what then?

Picasso once said: “Everything you can imagine is real.”

Now, with AI, that might actually be true.

Just as Scarlett Johansson’s character in Lucy ascends from instinct to omniscience, we may find ourselves on a path where thoughts manifest reality:

Design becomes instant Emotion becomes architecture Intention becomes outcome

But the question remains: can our moral maturity keep pace with our cognitive capacity?

Should We Just Focus on Outcomes?

Even in a world where imagination becomes reality, outcomes alone are insufficient.

Because:

Efficiency without values is dangerous Speed without ethics is reckless Creation without reflection is chaos

Trust cannot simply mean: “It works.”

It must also mean: “It’s worthy.”

A New Trust Equation

We don’t need to trust AI like a human.

But we must:

Trust the frameworks and incentives behind it Trust the international cooperation to contain it Trust that we, as a species, will not outsource moral agency to machines Because trust without foresight is surrender.

From Jobs to Roles

When AI handles the doing, our role is no longer worker or decider.

We become:

Explorers of potential Guardians of humanity Architects of value Curators of wonder

What role will you play when intelligence is abundant — but wisdom is scarce?

Closing Reflection: The End of Doing

Agentic AI is not simply transforming technology — it’s reshaping the terms of existence.

The end of doing is not the end of value.

It is the beginning of becoming — or the beginning of forgetting who we are.

So ask yourself:

In a world where machines can think, create, and improve themselves…

Will we choose to imagine wisely — or simply let them imagine for us?