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https://www.zaobao.com.sg/forum/views/story20260304-8670920?utm_source=android-share&utm_medium=app
2026-03-04
Author: Qi Dongtao
(Senior Research Fellow, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore)
Lianhe Zaobao
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Whether those who are replaced by AI or those who continue working with the help of AI, within the current capitalist system and culture, will not live more like human beings than before. On the contrary, this will further consolidate the capitalist system and culture. The excitement and anxiety brought by AI indeed prompt us to rethink some ancient questions: If human beings should not be commodities, then what exactly should they be? What are the value and meaning of human life? How can human value and meaning be better realized?
In a February 16 interview with Lianhe Zaobao, the well-known anthropologist Xiang Biao pointed out that the reason artificial intelligence (AI) can replace humans is because humans are too much like AI. This observation reverses the usual statement that AI can replace humans because AI is too much like humans. He then speculated (or perhaps hoped) that the emergence of AI would force people to live more like human beings, because only in this way would they not be replaced by AI. This speculation is logically sound and may indeed occur in a very small number of people, but in reality, for the vast majority, the likelihood is very low.
“To live more like a human being” has always been humanity’s dream. Such a dream exists because various factors have consistently prevented people from living more like human beings. Marxist theory of alienation holds that since capitalism became the basic operating mode of human society, the capitalist system has alienated people into commodities. Human value and meaning are priced through the market, so living more like a human being has come to mean living more like a high-priced commodity.
After the emergence of AI, operating according to capitalist market rules, it naturally causes unemployment to spread in certain industries by replacing human labor. Those who lose their jobs are like commodities that have lost their usefulness. Not only can they no longer fetch a good price, but even their livelihood becomes a problem. A person whose livelihood is at stake cannot live more like a human being in a capitalist society. Promotional narratives supporting AI often believe that AI can liberate people from tedious and heavy work, enabling them to engage in more meaningful activities, such as spending time with family and friends. This is also a dream of using AI to make people more like human beings rather than slaves to work. However, for most people, “liberation from work” often means unemployment and loss of income. In today’s capitalist society, the unemployed are unlikely to engage in those “more meaningful activities”; instead, they will desperately search for another job, making themselves slaves to another form of work, becoming commodities needed and valued by others.
Even those who have not yet been completely replaced by AI and lost their jobs will strive, according to the work logic they have fully internalized, to use AI as a tool to improve their efficiency, to do more work, to bring more income and reputation to their companies and themselves, and to increase their value as commodities. This is still the alienating logic of work slavery, but for modern people who deeply identify with this commodity logic, this feels like living more like a human being.
Recently, in a short video, the author saw a content creator working in the film and television industry emotionally recount how, during the Spring Festival holiday, he gave up family reunion and worked day and night trying to use AI to help his company overcome financial difficulties. He spent several days following AI’s instructions, “feeding” his relevant materials into the system, allowing AI to generate a “digital self” identical to him. He then attempted, through this digital self, to use AI’s capabilities and data to find a way out of the predicament. The content creator felt that this digital self was so much like him that he developed a strong sense of identification and emotional connection with it. When this digital self (AI), upon reaching the limits of its capabilities, had to terminate its collaboration with him, he was overwhelmed with grief and burst into tears.
What pained him was not only that the method he was about to find to resolve the financial crisis vanished into nothing, but also that the digital self with which he had formed deep emotional identification was about to disappear. Some of the comments under the video were very insightful. Many people, through his narration and tears, sensed his helplessness and loneliness; some even believed he might be suffering from depression. These viewers were, in fact, seeing that he had been alienated by work to the point of “no longer resembling a human being,” so much so that he developed such deep dependence and emotional attachment to AI. Others advised him to temporarily put aside work, spend time with his parents, and place his emotional focus on people around him—essentially urging him to “live more like a human being.”
Therefore, whether those replaced by AI or those who continue working with AI, within the current capitalist system and culture, will not live more like human beings than before. Instead, this will further entrench the capitalist system and culture. Some countries or regions have experimented with providing unconditional basic income (cash) to specific groups or areas in order to enhance recipients’ basic economic security, with the aim of enabling them to live more like human beings. Yet within the hierarchical culture of capitalism, basic income can at best sustain people’s material needs; in terms of spiritual life, their value and dignity remain at the lower end of the chain of contempt. To be alive but lacking dignity is not to be “more like a human being.”
The excitement and anxiety brought by AI indeed prompt us to rethink some ancient questions: If human beings should not be commodities, then what exactly should they be? What are the value and meaning of human life? How can human value and meaning be better realized? This article may seem to criticize capitalism’s alienation of human beings, but capitalism has indeed allowed people, in some respects, to live more like human beings than before. At the same time, in other respects, capitalism has made people increasingly like commodities. More crucially, is there any system better than capitalism at enabling people to live like human beings? Communism, which once competed with capitalism, has been proven to be a utopia. Humanity must therefore slowly seek paths of improvement within the framework of capitalism, including how to address the further alienation that AI may bring about.
The author is a Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore.
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