Imagine this scenario: you spend hours meticulously designing a presentation for a critical meeting. Every slide is carefully crafted, each point is thoughtfully considered, and the visuals are both engaging and informative. When your presentation is over, your boss comes over and says, “Great presentation. Which AI did you use?” You feel a little empty. Although some AI was used, you still want credit for thinking of the concept, flow, design, etc. You didn't let chatGPT do everything. But somehow you feel AI is being credited for something you did.

This scenario is not limited to presentations. Speeches, instructional activities, marketing campaigns, software solutions, business ideas, art, blogs (*cough cough), and innovative concepts are increasingly being created with AI assistance. It seems evident that we are headed towards a future where AI is going to play a bigger and bigger role in the work we all do. AI is shifting from being an assistant to becoming the primary driver. We risk becoming the assistants, or auditors, of AI, and our accomplishments may no longer feel like they’re truly ours.

Ego Makes Us Better

Everyone wants an 'atta boy/girl' for the work they do. It's one of the biggest motivations for anyone trying to do anything well. If you think self-satisfaction is your key motivating factor, just compare how you cook when you're eating alone to when you are cooking for friends and family. Or how clean your house looks when you're lounging on a Sunday to when you are hosting a party. Knowing that our name is going to be stamped on something we do greatly increases our motivation to do it well and we get a huge sense of satisfaction from that.

The approval of others is a huge factor in our motivation to put effort into the tasks we do. Even the whole idea of plagiarism exposes the human ego’s demand for credit for their ideas and products. This isn’t a bad thing. Ego is what pushed humans to create civilizations, technology, split the atom, and shape the world we live in today. What drive will humans have to innovate if we know AI will be given the credit?

Using AI can sometimes feel like flipping to the back of the book for the answers. Sure, you get the solution, but you miss out on the struggle, the creativity, and the satisfaction of solving it yourself. It’s in that messy process of figuring things out that we learn, grow, and find meaning. If AI becomes the solver of all problems, where does that leave us?

The Psychological Toll

For many, their work is a source of identity and pride. The diminishing value placed on human effort in an AI-dominated landscape threatens to unravel this connection. It’s not just about losing credit for a task; it’s about losing the sense of worth that comes from contributing something uniquely human.

This shift is more than an economic or technological challenge; it’s a deeply personal and psychological one. If the work we do is no longer seen as significant, what happens to our sense of purpose? Will we be content to merely oversee AI, or will we feel like spectators in our own lives, watching machines take over the roles that once defined us?

Foreigner In Your Own World

How will a world even look when the work we do has little to no impact on our identity? There’s another layer to this discussion: the feeling of alienation that comes when society changes so much that it no longer feels familiar. Imagine an old man from 150 years ago seeing women working in corporate offices and wearing pants. Or someone from the era of slavery witnessing interracial marriages celebrated openly. Or even someone from just a few decades ago marveling at the rise of smartphones and social media shaping our daily lives. Each of these shifts represents a massive societal transformation that would feel utterly foreign to those who lived in earlier times.

When we see society change in ways that make it feel unrecognizable, it’s nature’s way of letting us know we’ve overstayed our time here. It’s a subtle nudge that we are aging, that the world is moving on, and that we are becoming relics of a past era. For those of us who grew up valuing hard work, creativity, and personal achievement, a future dominated by AI might feel like that foreign world. A world where the work we do is no longer tied to our identity and where our contributions feel overshadowed by machines.

Conclusion

The rise of AI is an undeniable force, reshaping industries and redefining possibilities. But as we integrate these tools into our lives, we must be aware of the unintended consequences they bring. The question isn’t whether AI will take over tasks—it already has. The real question is whether we’ll allow it to take over our sense of worth and accomplishment. As society continues to evolve, we might find ways to preserve the value of the human touch in every achievement, no matter how advanced the tools we use. And perhaps, as we grapple with these changes, we’ll come to see them not as the end of our story, but as a new chapter.

What do you think? How do you see AI shaping our future and the value of human contributions? Share your thoughts in the comments below!