HX Beyond Work: Reconstructing Human Experience in a Post-AGI World

When I first introduced HX = CX + EX — the Human Experience as the combination of Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) — it was rooted in the observation that our sense of meaning is tightly bound to how we contribute and how we consume. Customers shape identity through choice and participation; employees through contribution and craft.

But what happens when Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) displaces 99% of jobs, as Roman Yampolsky provocatively warns? When there is no longer any comparative advantage for human labour, even reskilling becomes futile. The foundations of EX collapse. And with it, the delicate balance of HX as we know it.

This is no longer a question of productivity or economics alone. It is a civilisational question of how we reconstruct dignity, agency, and purpose when humans are unshackled — or severed — from work.

Two Divergent Futures: Commonwealth vs Fortress

If AGI ushers in a world without human work, humanity faces a bifurcation.

The Commonwealth Model (Abundance & Renewal) – Creativity, care, and civic engagement rise as new anchors of meaning. – Freed from survival labour, people re-channel their time into arts, community building, planetary restoration, and exploration. – HX is reconstructed inclusively — every citizen a participant in shared flourishing. The Fortress Model (Fragmentation & Control) – Manufactured dependency, managed simulations, and authoritarian narratives define purpose. – Human labour becomes a fetish luxury for elites, while the majority are pacified with controlled virtual realities. – HX is reconstructed hierarchically — a tool of control, rather than liberation.

Maps of Meaning

The Post-Work Timeline (2035 → 2050)

2035–2040: The Great Redefinition

– AGI achieves reliable cross-domain competence; most knowledge and service work evaporates.

– Governments experiment with universal basic income (UBI), universal services, and digital wealth redistribution.

– Social unrest spikes as reskilling programmes collapse. The first signs of “fetish labour” markets for human chefs, tutors, and artisans emerge.

– HX tilts uneasily as EX evaporates: people search for dignity through care and creativity.

2040–2045: The Divergence

– Commonwealth Trajectory: Civic projects scale — mass participation in climate remediation, new forms of digital democracy, explosion of arts and culture.

– Fortress Trajectory: Populations pacified through state-controlled VR environments. Human “work” reduced to symbolic service roles, loyalty rituals, or entertainment for elites.

– HX bifurcates sharply between inclusive flourishing and manufactured dependency.

2045–2050: The Anchoring of HX

– Commonwealth: HX = CX + New EX, where EX is redefined as Expression and Experience rather than Employment. The core of human identity is creative, relational, and civic.

– Fortress: HX becomes Hollow Experience — highly managed simulations curated by elites. Dignity and agency are replaced by pacification, control, and dependency.

– The existential question: do humans become explorers and creators — or subjects and spectators?

Conclusion: HX as Humanity’s Final Frontier

HX was always more than a formula. It was a way of describing how humans stitch together meaning from what they give and what they receive. In a post-AGI, post-work world, EX as employment disappears — but HX remains.

The challenge before us is whether we reconstruct HX through Commonwealth pathways of creativity, care, and civic renewal — or allow it to be co-opted into Fortress pathways of dependency, simulation, and control.

In this sense, the real work of the future will not be economic but existential:

to decide what it means to be human when we no longer need to work to survive.