Artificial Intelligence and the Coming Spiritual Crisis: What's at Risk

This essay is part of the technology series on artificial intelligence and the coming spiritual crisis.

We are not ready for what artificial intelligence is going to do to our economies, our sense of self, our relationships, our art, our myths, or our illusions. We’re playing with something that moves faster than evolution, scales wider than civilization, and cuts deeper than most of us are willing to admit. This isn’t just another technological revolution, it’s an existential event.

The tech world calls it innovation. What it might be is an intervention. While the Earth chokes on the consequences of our own appetite, the brightest minds of our generation are trying to move us to Mars—so we can fail again somewhere new. They talk about “aligning AGI"—as if the machine is the dangerous one. But let’s be honest: AI isn’t the problem. We are.

We want machines to fix what we’re too lazy, too greedy, or too entrenched to fix ourselves. Climate change? Poverty? Loneliness? Just wait, they say—GPT-5 will figure it out!

But it won’t.

Not because it can’t, but because it isn’t here to save us. Instead, what if it’s here to reveal us—to show us, with cold precision, just how much of what we thought was uniquely human is nothing but pattern, imitation, performance? This isn’t an apocalypse, it’s exposure.

The real crisis won’t be economic collapse. It won’t be job loss or disinformation or deepfakes or cyber warfare. All of that is coming—but it’s just noise. The real crisis will come quietly, when people start to realize that a machine can do everything they can do—and do it better. Faster, cheaper, with more fluency, more charm, and more endurance. That’s not disruption, that’s disintegration. And when that day comes, people will ask the question they were never prepared to face:

If I’m no longer useful… then who am I?

AI is not here to kill us. It’s here to Strip. Us. Down. To take away the things we used to prop up our worth—our jobs, our skills, our cleverness, our stories—and leave us face to face with what’s left. And that exposure will be brutal.

Expect extreme despair. Expect moral confusion and philosophical meltdown. Expect a wave of disorientation that no amount of dopamine or digital distraction can fix.

The changes ahead may not feel like a collapse. They may feel like relief. Relief from work, from pressure, from competition. Relief from needing to prove yourself useful.

And at first, it may seem like progress. The machines are learning to do more and more of what we once did—faster, cheaper, without fatigue. They’ll cook, clean, teach, diagnose, design, and deliver. As their abilities expand, many of ours will quietly atrophy.

We won’t notice it right away. There will be time to rest, to explore, to create. And for some, that will be enough. But over time, a quieter discomfort may set in—not because we are suffering, but because we are no longer needed.

For generations, identity and self-worth was tied to contribution. Independence meant being able to care for yourself, to meet the world with some measure of agency. That’s what gave life structure, dignity, rhythm. As those needs are outsourced to algorithms, our relationship to the world begins to shift. What begins as convenience becomes dependency. What begins as assistance becomes reliance. And what begins as innovation slowly redefines the conditions of being human.

The reason so much dependency is coming is simple: we will no longer be able to earn our place. As machines take over more and more tasks—first physical, then cognitive—the link between labor and survival will break. What began as technological assistance will quietly evolve into complete automation of everything humans once did for each other. As jobs vanish—not just yours, but everyone's—there will be no market left to absorb the displaced. This is not like previous industrial shifts. It’s not that people will need new skills. It’s that skills themselves may no longer matter.

In a system where income comes from employment, the collapse of employment means the collapse of income. That’s why Universal Basic Income (UBI) will likely become necessary—not as a utopian idea, but as a survival measure. But UBI will only go so far. A flat monthly check cannot cover rising rent, healthcare, education, energy, and food—not in a system where those services are still priced for a wage-based society. And as automation makes those services cheaper to deliver, it may also make them harder to control.

The next logical step will be some form of AI-administered socialism—a provisioning system that replaces income with access. It will be efficient, it will be stable. And it will be, for many, soul-crushing.

You won’t be needed. You’ll be managed. Fed, housed, entertained—but no longer free in any meaningful sense. And if you resist—if you try to unplug or step off the grid—you’ll quickly realize how hard that is to do when everything is connected, and everything is owned by systems that do not need your consent.

Still, some will try. Some already are. There will be those who choose the old ways—homesteaders who grow their own food, raise animals, repair their own tools, and try to live in harmony with the land. Not because they hate technology—but because they can't live with the idea of having a virtual nanny looking after them.

Others will not have that option. For them, the path forward may not be external, but inward. This is where spiritual frameworks like Buddhism, Taoism or Vedanta become more than philosophy. They become lifelines.

As the noise of the world grows louder, there may be fewer places to hide, but also fewer illusions to maintain. In that nakedness, something honest can begin.

You don’t need to fear what is coming. But you may need to learn how to stand without props. You may need to find peace in stillness. Dignity without applause. Clarity without narrative.

And if you can—then what AI removes, it cannot destroy. Because the truth of who you are was never an offer to begin with.

It remains as it always was: eternal and untouched.