The Arrival of the “Superhuman”
—The Struggle Between Human and “Superhuman” in a New AGI Epoch
By Ma Siwei (马四维)
In a recent and unsparing dialogue hosted by Harvard Business School, Anton Korinek, an artificial intelligence economist at the University of Virginia, issued a sobering warning: Artificial General Intelligence—AGI, or what he calls the “superhuman”—is no longer the stuff of distant fantasy. It could arrive within the next two to five years. When it does, the very foundation of our economic system will face an upheaval of unprecedented scale. Korinek contends that unless we fundamentally rethink the structure of labor, income, and value, the prevailing economic order will simply not hold under the weight of AGI’s full ascendancy.
This article draws on Korinek’s research and the latest developments in AI to explore the complex ramifications of AGI—the “superhuman”—for labor markets, productivity, income distribution, educational systems, and political configurations. It seeks to chart a path through this tectonic transformation and calls for the kind of policy imagination necessary to avert collapse.
Universal Basic Capital: Undoing the Wage-Centered Value Regime
The most immediate and disruptive shockwave of AGI will be felt in the labor market. By definition, Artificial General Intelligence is capable of performing any cognitive task a human can, often with greater efficiency. It does not tire, it retains perfect memory, and its replication costs approach zero. Korinek notes that once AGI surpasses human performance in reasoning, programming, writing, and strategic planning, labor will cease to be a competitive factor of production. Driven by the rational logic of profit maximization, employers will inevitably turn toward AI-based systems.
The age of human-centered labor will end. This shift will sweep across all sectors—not just in manufacturing or customer service, the fields traditionally considered ripe for automation. White-collar professions such as law, accounting, journalism, and research will also face the cold press of mass human redundancy. The labor market, a structure that has underpinned society for centuries, may lose its raison d’être.
Take the legal industry as an example. AI systems like GPT-4 and Claude are already proficient in analyzing contracts, extracting precedents, and drafting legal documents. While ethical judgments and interpretative nuance still require human oversight, the heavy foundational work done by paralegals is being quietly absorbed by software. Similar transitions are underway in radiology, where AI image recognition now outperforms the human eye in tumor detection, and in financial advising, where algorithmic forecasting often surpasses instinctual analysis.
The labor once essential to human livelihood will be displaced by AGI, the “superhuman.” If labor can no longer serve as the primary mechanism for income distribution, what then shall replace it? In both industrial and post-industrial societies, wages have not only sustained households but also conferred social status and personal dignity. Korinek argues that in an AGI-dominated economy, the market value of human labor is destined for obsolescence. Machines will perform more, for less. Wages will stagnate—or disappear altogether.
Our current social system—pensions, healthcare, consumer behavior, even taxation—is deeply rooted in earned income. Should this mechanism collapse, it would not merely spell economic disorder but the unraveling of our civilizational architecture. Modern capitalism has rested on a moral premise: that individuals “earn” their social place through work. If this creed crumbles, a new ethical order must arise—one that redistributes income based on rights, equality, or citizenship rather than labor.
For economies dominated by the service sector, the problem becomes even more acute. Industries built on emotional labor—retail, hospitality, psychotherapy—will gradually be sidelined by machines with increasingly sophisticated affective capacities. Imagine a humanoid assistant with flawless memory, no salary demands, and infinite availability. Could such a being replace a hotel concierge or a private tutor? If the answer is yes, what becomes of the human workers whose livelihoods depend on those roles?
Korinek introduces the concept of “basic capital,” a cousin to Universal Basic Income (UBI), though potentially more sustainable. Under this model, every individual would receive a share of the immense productivity gains generated by AGI. This distribution could take various forms: dividends from a national AI fund, collective ownership of digital infrastructure, or redistributive taxation of AGI-generated surplus value.
Two years ago, such proposals would have sounded like utopian indulgence. Today, they are edging into the mainstream. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has also publicly argued that without broad distribution of AGI-created wealth, social unrest is inevitable. Yet implementing this vision is a Herculean task: How do we define “fair distribution”? How do we prevent rentier classes from monopolizing AGI’s fruits? How can we forestall a new form of technological feudalism?
Global experiments with basic income—Finland’s pilot program, Alaska’s Permanent Fund—offer partial templates. But their scale is woefully inadequate for the AGI era. More critically, unless we also address asset inequality, basic income alone may exacerbate existing disparities. Hence the debate must pivot toward structural solutions: ensuring that citizens hold stakes in the infrastructure that makes AI profitable—data, compute, and algorithms.
Redefining Wealth and Power: AGI and the Future of Political Order
AGI challenges the very core of what we have historically understood as “wealth.” Across centuries, wealth has been tethered to scarcity: of land, labor, capital, and time. But AGI—artificial general intelligence—disrupts this equation. Digital agents possess infinite replicability, can autonomously generate ideas, and resolve problems on demand.
In this new paradigm, what holds true value? Perhaps attention, trust, and authenticity. Perhaps stewardship over the digital commons. Perhaps, in a world saturated with automation, leisure itself becomes the rarest luxury—where those who still possess “meaning, purpose, and freedom” are the truly rich.
In such a restructured society, wealth no longer equates to “having more,” but rather to “needing less.” The psychological shift from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance will be slow and uneven, but it may also bring about a deeper form of liberation—one not rooted in material accumulation, but in the emancipation of the human spirit. Power once derived from material holdings may pass into the hands of a new generation of scientific giants—those aligned with the “superhuman,” capable of wielding and shaping AGI’s expansive cognitive power.
AGI’s economic disruptions will inevitably spill into the political realm. Korinek warns that mass unemployment, exacerbated inequality, and the concentration of AI-generated wealth pose grave threats to liberal democracy. Backlashes of populism, technocratic isolationism, and even a resurgence of authoritarian governance are all conceivable outcomes.
Policymakers must give urgent attention to a series of systemic transformations: shifting from universal basic income (UBI) to “universal basic capital”; launching AI-driven retraining and redeployment programs; creating psychological support structures for identity in a “post-work” era; establishing legal frameworks for AI accountability; and advancing international treaties to ensure the safe and equitable use of AGI. None of these tasks is easy—but each is essential.
Governments must begin building institutional capacities to address the AGI transition—not only through economic instruments, but also by directly engaging in AI governance itself: through safety protocols, ethical standards, responsibility mechanisms, and multilateral agreements. At present, the United States lacks a unified regulatory architecture for AI. While Europe has taken early legislative steps, it too remains ill-equipped for the full scale of the challenge.
International cooperation is indispensable. AGI recognizes no borders, and its externalities—economic, environmental, or military—are global in scope. Should nations tumble into a race-to-the-bottom technological competition, the result could be catastrophic. Only by constructing a “shared governance framework for safe and just AGI” can such an outcome be averted.
The road ahead is fraught with peril. Without robust policy intervention, AGI may deepen the fractures that already divide us—across class, race, region, and generation. But with sufficient foresight, courage, and collective resolve, it may also inaugurate an entirely new epoch—an age of abundance, leisure, and unfettered creativity.
Education in the Age of AGI
Perhaps no domain stands to be as profoundly reshaped by AGI as education. If AGI systems can outperform humans in reading, writing, problem-solving, translation, composition, and even conducting scientific experiments, what is left for students to learn?
Anton Korinek argues that the purpose of education will shift from imparting cognitive skills to cultivating those uniquely human abilities that AGI struggles to replicate—emotional intelligence, social collaboration, physical coordination, psychological resilience, and moral judgment. In other words, the “soft skills” long relegated to the periphery of formal education may soon take center stage in future curricula.
Education, moreover, must embrace lifelong adaptability and autonomous learning. In a world where tools evolve faster than syllabi, the only viable path may be to teach students how to learn—especially with AI as a collaborator. AI will not replace teachers, but it will transform them from mere transmitters of information into mentors of personal growth.
Some institutions are already pioneering this shift. The Minerva Project emphasizes critical thinking and global citizenship, while the MIT Media Lab encourages students to co-create knowledge rather than passively absorb it. These remain experimental models, but they may well serve as blueprints for a new “meta-learning” framework.
Educational authorities might revise curricula annually, integrating AI tools into personalized learning plans and retiring rote memorization altogether. Labor ministries could launch retraining initiatives for displaced workers, supported by AI-powered tutoring systems. Central banks, too, should develop new economic models that incorporate non-human productivity and assess its potential deflationary effects.
AGI’s disruption is not merely economic; it also strikes at the foundation of human self-understanding. For centuries, intelligence has defined human superiority. IQ tests, memory competitions, and academic credentials form the scaffolding of modern meritocracy. But what happens when machines surpass us across these metrics? The psychological upheaval may rival any economic crisis.
Human self-worth has long been tethered to intellectual achievement—Einstein-like brilliance as a symbol of identity and aspiration. But such a hierarchy may collapse. In the face of AGI’s vast informational capacity, the knowledge gap between a university professor and a high school student becomes negligible.
In the age of AGI, once-secondary traits—such as initiative, resilience, and interpersonal communication—along with once-dismissed moral virtues like empathy, humility, and perseverance, may become the new hallmarks of post-cognitive identity. This transformation demands not only an educational overhaul but a cultural one.
Religion, the arts, and the humanities may come to play newly vital roles in helping people rediscover a sense of meaning. The rise of a “therapeutic culture”—from mental health apps and mindfulness practices to community-based emotional support networks—may serve as a critical psychic buffer against AGI-induced anxiety.
Today, AGI—the “superhuman”—is quietly entering our world, both as partner and rival. Two years? Five? No one knows when its arrival will become undeniable. But if Korinek and others are even directionally correct, then the window for human preparation is closing swiftly. We must begin now to construct new institutions, weave new narratives, and design new economic models. This is not a task for the distant future—it is an urgent necessity of the present.
AGI is not just another wave of innovation—it marks a civilizational inflection point. The question is not whether we accept it, but how we shape it. A society that navigates this transition wisely and cautiously may not only survive, but emerge with a renewed sense of dignity. A society that fails may find itself irreparably broken.
The superhuman is arriving at speed. The only question that remains: are we ready to hug him/her?