Scrutinizing The Value Of Human Work Post-AGI

InnovationAIScrutinizing The Value Of Human Work Post-AGIByJohn Werner,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I am an MIT Senior Fellow & Lecturer, 5x-founder & VC investing in AIFollow AuthorApr 28, 2026, 02:45pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Abstract office backgroundgettyFor workers, bosses and everyone else, there’s something of a shared sense that we are entering a new economy, one shaped and determined by the power of artificial intelligence. What will work look like in twenty years? Will it be a sort of elevated, bespoke version of what we have now – or will “jobs,” in effect, be obsolete?Plenty of prognosticators are suggesting that jobs will go away, that there will be, at least in the short term, massive unemployment. People I have seen speak at conferences this past year are calling for universal basic income to help deal with the changes AI will produce. Others are talking about the identity aspect of a job, and how that’s going to work. Some say that every human, in the AI age, will be a “manager” of his or her own smart tools.But there’s another sort of lens to view this through, as well: starting with the idea that human labor, unlike other kinds of commodities, is not fully fungible.“The telegraph and horse examples are clear cases of full substitution,” writes Seb Krier, a head engineer at Google Deep Mind, on Substack in January. “They also can’t necessarily adapt to do something else. The horse analogy fails because it treats labor purely as power output. It ignores the unique human capacity for complex, super-additive organization. You cannot stack a thousand horses to build a super-horse, but you can stack a thousand humans to build a corporation, a government, or a philosophy. Human utility is super-additive in a way that equine muscle is not.”Here’s how Krier applies that to AI:“’[AI being able to] do a...