AI and the Common Good: Will AI Save Us — or Replace Us?
Philip Kotler
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence presents humanity with a paradox. As machines become more intelligent in solving our problems, will they replace us?
AI will yield progress in medicine, climate science, and most other domains of human knowledge. Ultimately our corporations will be operating with AI agentic tools that produce efficient output with far fewer workers. It harkens back to a statement by the sociologists Warren Benis in 1988: “The factory of the future will have only two employees: a man and a dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. The man would be there to feed the dog.”
It does seem that the goal of leaders in AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) world is to replace labor with machines to produce most goods and services. AI excels at solving problems faster, cheaper, and often better than humans.
But human development does not arise from efficiency alone. It comes from engagement — from learning, struggling, deciding, and creating. The Common Good is not simply about solving problems efficiently. It is about fostering a society in which individuals develop their capacities, find meaning in their work, and participate in a fair and cohesive community.
Here lies the tension.
We risk entering a world that we might call “capability without flourishing.” Society may grow more productive, but individuals may become less engaged, less skilled, and less fulfilled. Work — long a source of identity and purpose — could diminish in meaning as machines play a larger role. The danger is “cognitive atrophy”. As AI performs more thinking tasks, humans learn less, practice less judgement, and human thinking is more passive.
In an intensive capital-driven and data driven world, production will be in the hands of a small number of big corporations. This slanted business concentration threatens the equitable distribution of benefits, a cornerstone of the Common Good.
I don’t think that we should slow down the progress of AI. The potential benefits are too great. Rather, AI must be guided by a broader vision — one that places human development at its center.
Here are three principles to guide the alignment of AI with the Common Good.
First, AI should augment human capabilities, not replace them. The goal is not to create a world where machines do everything, but one where humans can do more — and do it better.
Second, access to AI must be widely distributed. If intelligence becomes the defining resource of the 21st century, it cannot remain concentrated in few hands without undermining social stability.
Third, we must redefine our metrics of success. Instead of measuring progress solely in terms of productivity or output, we should evaluate whether AI contributes to human well-being, learning, and participation. The new metrics of success should be well-being, capability development, participation and purpose.
As the number of human jobs decreases, governments will need to establish systems to support the livelihood of displaced workers. The proposed system is the Universal Basic Income (UBI) where the government provides all adult citizens with a regular, unconditional sum of money regardless of employment status or income. The money would come from taxing the incomes of those still employed and placing a wealth tax on the rich.
How will so many jobless citizens take to this new world order? Most citizens in the past worked most of their life and enjoyed relatively little leisure before their lives ended. Thanks to advances in modern medicines, today’s citizens live much longer which means they have much more leisure time. The question arises: has our education system only prepared citizens for a life full of work until age 65, or shouldn’t it prepare them for a larger use of leisure time? We need to do more with the concept of “lifelong learning”, the pleasures of taking up new learnings and new recreations.
The great British economist, John Maynard Keynes, stated in 1930 that technological advancements would lead to such high productivity that the “economic problem” would be solved. He predicted that citizens in 2030 would only work 15 hours a week and enjoy great leisure time.
Conclusion
Will AI enlarge humanity — or replace it?
The future will not be determined by technology alone, but by the values that shape it. If guided wisely, AI can become a powerful instrument of the Common Good. If not, it may lead to a wosrld that is richer in knowledge — but poorer in humanity.
