The final test: why AI is our ultimate reckoning with human purpose

Part I: the tail end of a golden age

We live in an age where talk of and demand for “purpose” is rising. On corporate websites, at wellness retreats, in self-help books and career blogs. My own coaching and consulting practice is named purRpose as I’ve made it my life’s work to help others find theirs.

I consider this a step in the right direction. But the freedom to even ask “What is my purpose?” is not a universal luxury. It’s a question that typically arises only when either material security or social stability is present, ideally both. * In the absence of at least one of those pillars, purpose often collapses into survival.

* Critical Insight: Our "Western" consumer-driven model isn’t the only path to purpose. Many indigenous cultures, systems that were colonized, ignored, or erased, offered meaning through kinship, stewardship, and tradition. Purpose wasn’t a personal brand. It was a role within a living community. That model had its own limitations, but it’s worth asking: were there once ways of belonging that didn’t rely on GDP?

In the U.S., for example, around 60% of adults still live paycheck to paycheck. That’s not fertile ground for existential exploration; it’s a daily grind. The idea of self-actualization beyond economic security is a privilege, even in the richest country on Earth.

The illusion of "normal"

Growing up in Switzerland, I experienced both material security and social stability. Only when I Iived in Cambodia during my twenties did I realize that this wasn’t “normal”, it was a historical anomaly. I was born in a stable, democratic country of just a few million, into a loving and supportive family. In many ways, I won the lottery.

Switzerland, like much of post-World War II Western Europe, built a high-trust society in the ashes of European destruction. Peace, prosperity, and democratic institutions weren’t default settings; they were forged in response to trauma.

During World War II, my grandparents lived through scarcity, fear, and instability. In the aftermath, they overcompensated. Not irrationally, but understandably. My great-grandmother saved every plastic bag, every glass jar, every scrap of food. Waste was a moral offense. A modest pension and a basement full of supplies were signs of regained control in an uncertain world. Their lives weren’t about chasing dreams. They were about not reliving nightmares.

That generation’s frugality, their deep respect for resources, their belief that you only buy what you can afford, these are values I still admire. And they feel increasingly absent in today’s economy of consumer debt and disposability.

But the foundation they and my parents built, through resilience, discipline, and collective effort, gave me something radically different: the privilege to explore. To take risks. To fail and try again. To ask: What do I really want to do with my life? A question they would never have dared to ask.

And yet, I’ve started to see the scaffolding behind that privilege, and the cracks now forming beneath it.

The purpose of building a security blanket

For my grandparents’ generation, purpose was not abstract, it was urgent and concrete: rebuild what was lost, create stability, and ensure a better life for your children.

They succeeded. The post-war boom brought unprecedented growth, especially in Western Europe and North America, it created a thriving middle class, world-class infrastructure, and expanded access to education, healthcare, and housing. In short, It was an extraordinary success. For decades, we experienced something that felt like steady progress, lifting millions into a better life.

Over time, however, that trauma-driven urgency to build stability morphed into a generalized pursuit of security: good education, stable job, homeownership, pension. Eventually, “more” became not just the means to a good life, but the definition of one. In doing so, it inadvertently created a purpose vacuum. The "what" (a stable job, a house) mostly eclipsed the "why", leaving subsequent generations with material comfort but a growing spiritual hunger.

That’s not a moral failing by any means. It’s human nature. After instability, you seek control. And if you build a system that delivers a relatively high level of peace, freedom, growth and prosperity for 80+ years, that’s not something to critique, it’s something to admire. And to acknowledge that we are still reaping the fruits of the sacrifice of forebearers.

But we must also recognize the practical limits of that model, especially its longevity and sustainability. And that we are likely living at the tail end of its cycle. The issue isn’t moral decay, or even primarily political failure. The issue is mathematical: systems built on compounding growth have expiration dates.

The math behind the decline

So this isn’t about blame. It’s about math. Capitalism, especially in its current financialized, globalized form, tends to concentrate wealth through compounding returns. That’s not a theory. It’s arithmetic. *

* Critical insight: The “Hockey Stick” Effect Compounding growth always curves upward, slow at first, then fast. At some point, the system reaches an inflection point: resources concentrate, inequality widens, and foundational stability breaks down.

One theoretical (and for some maybe ideological) role of government is, in part, to delay this "hockey-stick" moment, to flatten the curve and to push the inevitable as far back as possible. But most policies that curb short-term gains are politically unpopular. Most leaders operate on a 4- to 8-year horizon. The system rewards short-term growth and patchwork solutions versus long-term, sustainable growth.

But we also have to acknowledge that this mathematical tendency doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It was charged by the rules of the game we designed. A multi-decade focus on short-term shareholder value, tax structures that increasingly favored investment returns over wage growth, and a decline in worker bargaining power all steered the system toward this outcome. The point is not to lay blame, but to recognize that the feedback loops were not only mathematical, they were encouraged.

A simplified example: Imagine two individuals, both starting at age 25 with $25,000. One earns a 2% annual return; the other, 6%. By age 70, the first has ~$60,000. The second? ~$350,000.

That’s a sixfold difference, driven solely by rate of return (which e.g. is impacted by access to power and systems or the capability to afford higher risk). Adding to that, most people obviously don’t start with assets when they are young. Many start with debt. Especially as healthcare, education, and housing costs are ballooning. The example simply shows how the feedback loop automatically leads to exponential divergence.

So over time, the effect of concentrating wealth, income and power compounds, across generations and systems:

• CEO pay: In 1965, the average U.S. CEO earned 20x more than the average worker. By 2022, it was 398x.

• Minimum wage: Adjusted for inflation, the U.S. minimum wage peaked in 1968. It's stagnated ever since.

• Housing: In 1970, a median home cost ~4x the average U.S. salary. Today, it’s 8x or exponentially more in urban areas.

• Student debt: In 1980, public university tuition averaged ~$2,000/year (adjusted). Today, it’s five times that. Total U.S. student debt exceeds $1.7 trillion.

• Tax policy: Since 2001, nearly 37% of U.S. federal debt stems from tax cuts, mostly benefiting the wealthy, while gutting public services.

This isn’t just about the "hockey stick" moment we are slowly entering into for wealth inequality and government debt. The long tail of our current economic model is showing up across systems, social, ecological, psychological, demographic.

Rates of burnout and anxiety are spiking, especially among younger generations. Chronic illnesses linked to stress, diet, and sedentary lifestyles are on the rise. Fertility rates are falling below replacement levels in most developed countries, while mass migration, driven by war, climate change, and economic desperation, tests the limits of social cohesion. We still don’t understand the long-term effects of microplastics in our bodies or PFAS in our drinking water. Meanwhile, polarization and populism gain traction in the political vacuum created by declining trust and growing inequality. And, underlying it all, climate change and biodiversity loss threaten the planet’s ecological foundations.

None of these are isolated crises, and no matter how affluent you are, it's hard to buy yourself out of most of them. They’re all symptoms of the same underlying momentum: a system created for a time-span of 2-3 generations (so, relatively long in the context of the average human lifespan, but also, relatively short in the context of humanity itself), now stretching past its limits.

And yet, it’s important to resist the temptation of cynicism or conspiracy. This isn’t the result of a secret plan. It’s the predictable outcome of a powerful cycle. One that lifted millions out of poverty and created extraordinary progress for about 80 years. That cycle is now reaching its natural end. It was not a mistake, but a chapter.

Concentrated wealth and power are not aberrations. They are feedback loops inherent in any compounding system. The job now is not to vilify, but to understand what comes next.

We are, in other words, entering a new phase. And just as this old model creaks under its own weight, we encounter a new force, not a person, not a policy, but a technology, that may either accelerate the unraveling or offer tools to rebuild differently.

Part II: AI and human purpose - the reckoning ahead

The biggest unknown in the question of where the pendulum will swing next is AI.

And what’s striking is how AI is colliding with the very cracks in our system outlined earlier. Economic fragility. Raising inequality and national debt levels. Meaninglessness at work. Social isolation. A healthcare model stretched thin. We were already overdue for reckoning, and AI is not just arriving in that context, it’s accelerating it.

What’s clear to me is that AI won’t just tilt the pendulum. It will swing it with a force that is hard to grasp.

For context: I was in Silicon Valley during the blockchain and crypto "boom". Even as I saw the structural issues in the FIAT system and the theoretical promise of smart contracts, I remained skeptical. It never felt like a fundamental shift, more a speculative wave with isolated use cases.

AI was different. The moment I interacted with the first LLMs, I knew something had changed. And that sense hasn’t faded, it’s deepened. Today, I use AI every day in my work. An essay like this one, for instance, would have taken me the better part of a week to polish and finalize. Now, with an LLM as my thinking partner, I can spend most of my energy on clarifying the argument, strengthening the structure, and refining the insights, and let the machine help shape the form. It’s become a real-time exercise in critical thinking. The result? Maybe 25% of the time it used to take. Same quality. Less friction. More focus. That’s the upside.

But it’s also why I believe we’re underestimating just how disruptive this could be. The rollout is moving at a pace unlike any technological transition before it. It feels like the pre-Covid moment: a vague background hum, a rising tension, the sense that something enormous is coming, but we can’t quite see its shape.

Of course, every major leap from the printing press, to electricity, to the internet has been met with fear. There’s always been a chorus of skeptics, and yet the world has kept turning. And while the world most likely will keep on turning, I do think this time it’s vastly different. Not because AI is inherently good or evil, but because of its speed, scale, scope, and because its impact will be global yet most likely profoundly uneven, reshaping power dynamics globally

And this isn’t about crying doom. It’s about acknowledging the moment. And taking the time to ask what future we want and how we might get there. This isn’t one invention in one sector. This is the broad automation of cognitive (and in due time physical) labor across the global economy. And it’s already happening.

We don’t need Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for impact. As long as there’s a profit motive, AI will be deployed. These systems speak fluently, already behave somewhat intelligently, and work tirelessly. Companies and everyone of us will use them, not because they’re perfect, but because they’re good enough. The economic logic is already there.

Scenario 1: the negative path / techno-feudalism

Let’s start with the darker scenario. While it’s not inevitable, it probably is the most plausible. First, because it already is on the way and second, the past usually is a good (or in this case bad) indicator of the future. Here, a small group of tech companies consolidate control across industries. AI agents don’t support workers, they replace them in vast numbers. But the deeper threat is not the replacement of tasks, but the automation of identity. For over a century, our answer to "Who are you?" has been tied to "What do you do?". AI is poised to make that answer obsolete for millions, forcing a societal identity crisis on a scale we have never witnessed.

Salesforce has already released is agentic workforces. Meta is currently building platforms that could disrupt the entire ads supply chain, from creative studios to marketing agencies. And similar forces are already affecting customer support, software engineering, HR, law, even medicine. Most importantly, these early-stage AI agents mostly affect entry-level jobs. The jobs young people graduating from college would be offered, kickstarting their careers.

Some reports suggest some companies are currently reducing manual workflows by 1% per week. That may sound small, until you realize that at that rate, entire departments could be gone in under two years.

Even if humans remain “in the loop,” they’ll be fewer and farther between. If 80% of tasks are automated, we may only need a fraction of the people to overlook them. Mass layoffs will follow.

In the short term, this may boost profits, especially for those selling the tools. But in the long run, it creates a dangerous paradox:

A hyper-optimized economy, with not many humans left to contribute and consume.

However, without a relatively broad middle class, the backbone the democratic and capitalistic societies that defined this area of prosperity in the Western world, the whole structure falters. Shrinking incomes. Faltering demand. Rising polarization. Ballooning inequality. We arrive at the endgame of late capitalism: a post-work economy run by a technocratic elite. The machine eats its own tail.

Automation without a reimagined social contract won’t be liberation. It will be enclosure. The dream was always to free humans from drudgery. But without redistribution, the gains accrue to the few and the rest are left behind.

Scenario 2: The positive path / A renaissance of purpose

And yet, another path is possible, one that leads not to enclosure but to a renaissance of true human purpose. This future is built not by competing with AI, but by leveraging it to solve systemic problems while reinvesting its gains into the human sphere.

Imagine healthcare, no longer a system strained by cost and access, but one where AI-driven diagnostics and personalized treatment plans make expert care a universal right, freeing human practitioners to focus on the patient connection that fosters true healing.

Imagine climate modeling that moves beyond forecasting disaster to actively orchestrating ecological regeneration, using AI to manage smart grids, optimize resource use, and restore biodiversity.

This systemic renaissance, healthier people on a healthier planet, is not the end goal. It is the stable platform upon which the real work begins. The debate is not whether an AI can create art or simulate empathy, it is that humans need the experience of doing so. With our material needs met by an automated economy, our time and energy are freed for the intrinsically human work that was always the point, and as most scientific research shows, the basis for a happier life: working towards a bigger contribution, such as deep mentorship or scientific discovery driven by pure curiosity. Turning off our screens to work on our mental and physical health. Deepening our ties with friends and family, the rewarding act of building a community, and the spiritual dignity of creativity or caregiving.

As technology reshapes our world, the nature of creativity itself comes into sharper focus. What does human artistry mean in a new age? (The Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889.)

This isn't a retreat to a pre-technological past; it is a leap into a post-labor future, one where technology doesn't just free us from drudgery, but finally frees us for humanity itself.

Why the stakes are high

These are, of course, polar outcomes. And normally (being Swiss) I’d advocate for the middle ground. A little nuance. A little compromise. A fondue of realism.

But in this case, even the center feels unstable. The forces driven by our already crumbling system and this technical breakthrough are centrifugal, pulling us toward extremes. This doesn't mean a messy, contradictory middle ground is impossible. In fact, it is the most likely outcome: a patchwork future of renaissance for some and enclosure for others, existing side-by-side.

These two paths, total enclosure or a true renaissance, represent the stark choice ahead. The fragmented, unequal world we already inhabit can no longer hold. AI is the force that will break the deadlock because systems don’t bend forever. Eventually, they snap. And when they do, history shows us what happens: the system resists change until the cost of doing nothing becomes higher than the cost of adapting.

I’ve seen this firsthand. At Swiss Re, we were sounding the alarm on climate change in the early 2000s. Back then, the cost of prevention was comparably low but politically inconvenient. Now, we’re paying a much higher price for adaptation and recovery. And yet, our collective planning horizon remains painfully short. AI could follow a similar pattern.

Right now, we’re mesmerized by what it can do. But underneath the breakthroughs lies a quieter story: one of structural risk. Not because AI is inherently malicious, but because we’re building it on top of the same foundations we’ve neglected elsewhere.

These systems are trained on us. On our books. Our conversations. Our art. Our code.

Which means they reflect not just our intelligence, but also our blind spots, our inequalities, our incentives, our history. By default, they will scale what already exists. Including what we’ve failed to address.

The risk isn’t only technical. It’s systemic. Left unexamined, we may reach a point, like with climate, where course correction becomes harder, costlier, and more disruptive. That’s why this moment matters. Not just for engineers or CEOs. But for artists. Writers. Educators. Small business owners. Parents. Caregivers. For anyone with something to say, build, or protect.

Because AI isn’t just a new tool. It’s a mirror. A mirror we’re still shaping and being shaped by.

And that makes this more than a technical inflection point. It’s a test of responsibility. Of authorship. Of purpose.

The final test

The final test, then, is not whether we can build intelligent machines. We are already doing that. The test is whether we can look into the mirror they provide and choose to build a more intelligent society. Purpose is no longer a personal journey of self-discovery, it has become a collective project of societal design. The question AI forces upon us is the most important one we may ever face: Now that our machines can do almost anything, what are human beings for?

Purpose, in this context, is no longer a personal luxury. It’s a societal necessity. Whether you’re navigating this transition as a leader, creator, educator, parent, or citizen, it’s worth asking: What do you want to contribute? What systems are you reinforcing, consciously or not (like me using AI assisting me to ideate and research for this piece)? And what kind of future would you like to help make more likely?

If any of these questions resonate, I’d welcome your thoughts. I’m interested in honest reflections, challenges, ideas and in connecting with others who strive to guard the essential and explore with heart.