Human Renaissance in the age of Artificial Intelligence

Human Renaissance in the age of Artificial Intelligence

What if the greatest tool humanity ever created also risks eroding what makes us human?



The Evolution of Tools


Since the dawn of human civilisation, tools have served as extensions of human capabilities.

The wheel extended our legs, the aqueducts replaced the need to carry water, the abacus completed calculations.

These were more than just means of convenience, they were signs of the desire to offload physical and mental effort onto external systems.

With each advancement, our tools became more complicated, more autonomous, and more embedded in our daily life.

Artificial Intelligence is at the latest stage of this evolution. It’s now able to predict, to adapt, and to respond without direct human intervention.
And in doing so, it’s blurring the lines between the extension and the entity.

The Rise of AI

This shift took a major leap in the mid-20th century.

The first modern computer enabled a new form of communication between humans and machines.

Machines like the ENIAC followed very strict statements to follow pre-programmed rules and return outputs.

Their utility and ability were still contained within defined tasks, unable to develop or adapt on their own.

As technology progressed, this evolved into deep learning and neural networks, capable of learning from patterns in data.

These models rely on billions of data points and statistical reasoning to try and mimic human reasoning.

That is the scope of AI’s utility today: from self-driving cars to analyzing medical scans, to synthesizing thousands of pages of documents in a matter of seconds, tasks that once required years of training, expertise, and human judgment.

Today, experts are increasingly being replaced by systems that can produce results faster than any human can.

This raises profound ethical questions about meaning, trust, and control.

Today, more power and control are given to autonomous machines. From driving cars to doing administrative work, from manufacturing robots to humanoid assistants, they are taking over human traits and capabilities more than ever before.

And yet, no matter how advanced AI seems today, its application is still narrow.

The Human Edge


In the early to mid-20th century, researchers observed that infants in orphanages who didn’t receive emotional care or human interaction often grew up emotionally unresponsive, with developmental issues, and some even passed away.

Caregivers were often overloaded and couldn’t provide the nurturing attention that they needed.

The infants were not abused, but emotionally and socially neglected. They were fed and kept clean, but rarely held, spoken to, or comforted.

The term ‘hospitalism’ was coined by psychologist René Spitz to highlight the profound effects of emotional and social neglect at a young age.

This has led to the understanding that emotional and social needs are just as important as physical needs for survival.
No algorithm can replicate the warmth of a hug, nor the depth of human connection.

It will never gain an understanding of the connection between people, the feeling of holding your newborn baby, nor the concept and fear of death.
It is clear that AI will not gain a sense of purpose, a sense of morality, or self-awareness no matter how good the imitation is.

AI must stay in the 'software' lane.

Giving access and incorporating AI into hardware will give real agency to AI in the real world and it will not be able to act morally.

Giving it access to autonomous machinery and letting it act in physical space will be harder to control and ethically dangerous. A simple error could escalate tensions and lead to war.

This reality offers a great opportunity for the human species to focus more on self-improvement, connection and community purpose.

Capital Reimagined

There must be a synergy between the human species and the AI species that we have created. A relationship where we rely on both, where AI supports us and does not embody us.

This is how we could reclaim and deepen our humanity:

by focusing on what makes us human, and letting AI handle mundane, repetitive, and rigorous tasks.

One of the most powerful human needs is to belong. We are social creatures who evolved as members of tribes and communities, relying on physical connections.

Reclaiming this requires intentional action, where new economic and social models become essential.

A resource-based economy offers a framework for re-centering human well-being over technological efficiency.

Community or locally tokenized funding systems could empower neighborhoods, cooperatives and grassroots initiatives without relying on corporations or governmental institutions.

A great example of this new model is Barcelona’s participatory budgeting, where residents vote on how to allocate the city’s budget. This approach decentralizes decision-making and gives people direct agency in the development of their community.

These systems are about agency by allowing individuals to participate directly in shaping their lives rather than being passive consumers of products and policies.

This fits well with the vision of Jacques Fresco, who designed a resource-based economy where people’s needs would be met over profit.

He believed that technology and science could help us share what we have and by putting the environment and communities first.

Barcelona is taking the first steps toward that vision by improving transparency in decision-making, empowering citizens, and fostering a stronger sense of belonging.

By embedding technology in the service of community, we invert the current paradigm: instead of AI displacing human connection, it can support and amplify it.

This vision doesn’t call for rejecting technology but for redefining its role.

AI could help optimize distribution and ensure transparency and fairness, but decision-making, values, and relationships must remain human.


The Human Renaissance

We stand at a crossroads.

As we get closer to the Technological Singularity, AI will exceed our capabilities. Whether it becomes a liberating tool for humanity or a dehumanizing one will depend entirely on the boundaries we set and the values we uphold.

By confining AI to “software” and not "hardware", and by investing more in human connection, community, and creativity, we can build a future where technology amplifies what makes us human rather than eroding it.

Just like how primitive tools enabled us to expand our capabilities and highly contributed to our evolution, we now face a hyper-intelligent tool that will surpass us.

Just as fire and the wheel sparked earlier chapters of our evolution, AI may be the next tool that will define our cognitive, social, and moral evolution.

AI will always attempt to act human. It’s a mirror reflecting back our language, biases, and creativity through billions of data points. But it will never become human.

By limiting it to software use, to support rather than supplant human agency, it creates a pathway to a healthier symbiosis between humans and machines.

We must invest in what makes us human: real-world connection, belonging and more.

By doing so, we protect ourselves from dehumanizing technology and rediscover the meaning of being human in the first place, not to create machines that act like us, but to inspire us to become more of ourselves.

Philanthrocapitalists must act now to ensure AI amplifies humanity. By confining AI to software, building resource based economy models and redefining the role of capital in the age of automation, we can spark a Human Renaissance and avoid a dehumanized future.