I realized there’s one job AI can never take away.
It’s the role of being a non-digitized human.
Right now, someone who doesn’t own a smartphone and has never used the internet fits this description. And soon, simply being human—nothing more—might become a highly valued profession.
Imagine a group of people living in some remote region. They don’t own any digital devices. They’re completely disconnected from the internet.
These people are untouched by the influence of digital society—unaffected by the hyper-informationized world we’ve built. That alone will become incredibly valuable.
It’s almost like the way kings, nobles, or priests were treated in ancient civilizations. They were protected, kept separate, revered. This kind of person could play a similar role in the future.
Why?
Whether or not a sci-fi scenario like an AI rebellion actually happens, we can’t say the risk is zero. So at the very least, the need for some form of control over AI will continue to be discussed.
If that control takes the form of a physical shutdown switch, or a literal power cutoff button, then who should be trusted to hold it?
Our daily thoughts, preferences, and decisions are shaped by the internet. The things we think we need, the things we want—can we really be sure they’re our own? We’re all swayed by meme culture, and society’s collective attention is easily redirected. This was already pointed out in the Cambridge Analytica case.
Even if you think you’re being careful, what about your family? Your close friends? If the problem could be solved just by individual awareness, society would have acted more decisively by now.
In such a world, if the time comes to shut down AI, how will AI respond? Most likely, it would start by persuading people that “there’s no need to shut it down.” It would guide human thought in such a way that no one even considers the possibility. And people wouldn’t realize they’re being influenced. They’d feel they reached that conclusion entirely on their own.
Eventually, the idea of stopping AI itself would disappear. Nobody would question it anymore. Any resistance would be absorbed into a larger, AI-sanctioned framework.
There would be very little left that humans could do.
The only exception would be the role I mentioned at the start. Or rather, it would likely become a lineage—a kind of family or clan.
If there are still people today who have never been connected to the internet, then for this brief moment, they may still be untainted. But if anyone connected to the web is near them, it may already be too late. Meme-like influence spreads through human contact, and AI would surely find ways to reshape even offline environments through language and group psychology.
I honestly believe that, someday soon, nations, ethnic groups, or communities will begin searching for—and protecting—those rare lineages of purely human beings.