The shift
If machines can produce more economically valuable outputs, societies may begin to mistake market productivity for personal worth. That would be a political and moral failure, not a technological inevitability. People need more than income: they need belonging, respect, agency and a future they can help shape.
The opportunity
Greater productive capacity could make basic services, education and assistance more widely available. AI can give people new expressive and practical abilities. Shared prosperity is a choice about institutions, public goods and economic rules.
What to monitor
Exclusion from essential services, income insecurity, access gaps, meaningful public participation, rights to contest automated decisions, and whether people feel they have influence over their communities.
The public-interest response
Make essential rights non-negotiable, protect individual agency, experiment transparently with ways to share productivity gains, and involve affected people — not only technology companies — in shaping the social contract.