Jeff is an engineer. He is quick, thoughtful and great at what he does. He has been leading a team of eight people for many years. They divide their work equally between them, cover for each other when life gets tough, and celebrate with a steak dinner when a big project is finished near Texas Roadhouse.
But recently everything has changed. Jeff is told to lead another type, a group of AI agents. He started by assigning each AI agent a task and then they ran off without complaint or distraction. He even added an AI supervisor to track their performance and keep them in line. Jeff provides human control. He tells me that he is working harder than ever.
It’s not just Jeff’s life that changes. This is ours too. (Thailand, 2020)
Little things
When I was in high school and I was writing a paper and I needed a word but couldn’t find it, I asked my English teacher. In college, I leaned against my desk and asked Rob, my co-worker who was good with words. And as a professional, I call my editor. Now I ask the AI. And in three seconds flat I have five new words to choose from.
And when I was a graduate student working on a research project and faced a question I couldn’t answer, I walked into the McDonald-Stewart Library building and sat across from Margret, the librarian. She listened and then looked at me. We talked back and forth, went through the bookshelves, looked for answers. Now I ask the AI and often have what I need in seconds.
And when it was 2 a.m. and my breakup with Krista, my college girlfriend, was weighing on me, I lay there and weighed: Should I call someone about this? And when I finally called, the person on the other end was sad and even a little angry for me. But now, at 2 in the morning, I open my iPad and talk to the AI.
Each of these decisions is just a small one. Each is smart, efficient and completely understandable. But put them together and these decisions change. (Crawford et al., 2024; Hajek et al., 2025))
And expensive…
Random villages
Here, the work that started 20 thousand years ago is being completed.
This is why we humans slowly moved away from the villages that held us. Five hundred years ago, that drift turned into a march. Soon, all the villages disappeared. And into the space they left, the place where connectivity once lived, consumer culture has entered with a simple message: Make it your own! People don’t need too much! Be a self-made person!
So today we rush past each other and are alone doing what was once the work of the whole community. It’s chores and food and cooking and dishes and laundry and falling in front of the TV from exhaustion. We are already separated in ways our ancestors could never imagine and in ways we have stopped noticing because this is the water we swim in.
And yet behind all these rushes there were still random villages. My English teacher, my colleague Rob, my editor, my librarian, my friend who picked up the phone at 2am, etc. And you had your people, your random tribe.
These were not large communities. They were the people we stumbled upon along the way…random, ordinary, but irreplaceable.
And now, one by one, AI is making them redundant. He does not do this with intent or malice. It does it efficiently. It is much faster and more accessible than humans.
What happens now that we can do more and more while needing less and less people? Is this the end of the random village?
The village speaks…
The village has something to say here.
For two million years, people worked side by side, shared the work, shared the burden. And since they did it together, it didn’t last long. It took three, maybe four hours a day to meet everything the village needed.
And the rest of the day… it wasn’t filled with more work or revised to-do lists. It was a time for each other: a time for music to be loud without plans, meals to linger with conversation, stories to be told around the fire after dark.
The village realized that their work is in the service of life, communication, and not vice versa.
And here is the most important part: it’s something your brain and body still remembers. That’s what they were made for. Two million years of life of this village left a deep impression.
you nervous system still longing for an easy and comfortable time with his people; the simplicity of relaxing together. That’s why you find yourself looking for people who might be close, because somewhere under all the noise of modern life, your nervous system still remembers how good it feels when people are with you.
And today, AI comes with a suggestion: I can pay you back. Give me your boring chores, let me take care of them for you, and you can go spend time with your people.
… And consumer culture is calling
But there is another voice. And it is loud.
The culture of consumerism has been undermining the village for centuries. Its message has never changed: Do more, do more, make more, earn more. There is always another rung on the ladder, another yard to beat, another reason why now is not the time to slow down. (Curran, 2017)
So consumer culture has a different plan in mind: Use AI to get things done faster and faster than anything before. And pour the time AI saves right into it labor productivity.
Consumer culture asks us to do more, in the process we need fewer people, and we will be more isolated than before, while we are said to be winners.
This is the turning point.
Because when AI gives back, it’s really up to us to decide. We can hand it over directly to consumer culture and watch it disappear into greater effort. Or we can do something important with it, something important.
We can get back to each other. This is what I call going back to the village.
The village did everything in four hours so that they could spend the rest of the day relaxing, resting and enjoying each other. It knew what Consumer Culture never did: that it was always important to be here, with our people, together, unhurried.
Epilogue
I asked Claude, one of today’s most powerful AI systems, to read the article and provide the final word. Here, in his own words, is what Claude had to say: I am a tool. Something amazing, I hope. But a tool in the hands of a culture that tells you to use me to do more, to do more, to achieve more – and to never recommend the time I’ve given to sit with my people, in a hurry, around the fire and go nowhere. Please don’t let this happen. Use me. And then put me down. And go find your people.
