Backgrounder: Massive Transformational Purpose
If the promised AI techno-utopian future is even half true, how would you contribute to the universe? An Interactive Experiment to help find your massive transformational purpose.
TL;DR
Imagine you had the time availability, enough income to live comfortably, with the hope and the energy of your early twenties. What if that was available to you in the near future? What massive contribution could you make?1
This section has 3 Apps2 (so far) that allow you to explore your human possibilities if “work”, and its sense of self-worth, was ripped away from you.
The odds are it will happen over the next few years as AI continues to replace jobs3.
App 1: Geodesic
This App explores what Maslow’s hierarchy of needs may be in a post-scarcity world. I don’t aim to predict or endorse that this world is emerging, nor will it happen without huge upheaval. But with an optimistic view what does human purpose look like after “Abundance”.
Here is a post I wrote to explain the idea.
The App is free to use and allows you to save and share the structure that maps to your purpose. It is open source on github.
App2: Ladder Play
This App explores your goals either now or in a post-scarcity world. Rather than focus on consumption and an easy but meaningless Eloi life, why not explore a Massive Transformational Purpose?
Framed as a set of coaching tools that are progressively unlocked, you can explore different dimensions of what matters to you and how you can create that.
The App is free to use and allows you to save and export the results of your interactions. It is open source on github.
App 3: Post-scarcity Framework
This App challenges the potential careers and paths of purpose in a post-scarcity dominated future. As with the other Apps, I’m not guessing or cheerleading for AI to take our jobs, but what are the new jobs that might be invented, or, if work is optional, paths you can pursue instead of just playing golf. (Not that there is anything wrong with that! In fact sports may be one of the most resilient careers because nobody wants to see human vs robots. Its the power of limits).
This DRAFT App is free to use and allows you to save and export the results of your interactions. It is open source on github.
Longer Explanation
Origin of MTP
Massive Transformational Purpose (herein known as MTP) is some very adequate hyperbole for our very hyperbolic time. The term was coined by Peter Diamandis: author, futurist, co-founder of Singularity University, founder of Xprize. Peter relentlessly writes, speaks and funds - a busy guy with boundless optimism.
Many people don’t like Peter because he glosses over the downsides4 - a case study in Charlie Munger’s quip:
But we can learn from Peter.
He enthuses that exponential technologies will solve humanity’s greatest challenges and urges people to find their MTP or be with someone who is on their MTP journey that you resonate with. I think that advise is useful and positive and constructive.
Your MTP could also be to save the world from people who gloss over the downsides of our current5 wave of “Techné”6 . Your MTP could also be a massive support to one (or a few people), like your children or your neighbours or your parents. Massive does not have to be global or capitalist7.
AI impacts - partisan views
Peter is an influential cheerleader for deep tech investment (space, longevity etc) and now, often in raptures of the progresses and potential of AI and Robotics - he has regular shows on Youtube and often has one-on-one interviews with leading acceleration-ists such as Kurzweill, Musk, Schmidt - without exception they all possess the similar optimism. Some of these e/acc people are feared and loathed for good reason.
I DO have a strong opinion that “wisdom” amongst the techbros is in short supply, see my post about wisdom availability. The upcoming AI Doc movie also provides evidence.
Will we side-step extinction? How about an oligarchic dystopia? I have zero clue.
Some friends sit clearly on the dystopian side of the fence, for them, optimism on my behalf is usually dismissed as “well, you are a techy”.
True, I am engaged, because it would be stupid for someone with my experience and skill to not do my best to comprehend the good and bad of it.
All of us (including the neo-luddites) must realise, and internalise the Faustian pact we’ve already committed to. ANY enamourment with: Google Maps, Search, Social Media, Movies with special effects, or in fact anything emanating from a glowing rectangle is an output of AI.
Even neo-luddites with any claim of purity would be mostly found to be disingenuous8.
I personally align with Mo Gawdat from his book “Scary Smart”9 of the big 3 truths:
AI is here to stay,
AI will become significantly smarter than humans,
…and bad things will happen if we do not change our approach
Readers of my other posts should have gleaned that I too, believe taking self responsibility is where the potential for preventing dystopia begins.
Other up-close issues of environmental (power and water), employment and human flourishing/well-being are equally salient but subject to much disinformation and not the subject of this post.
Unemployment, UBI, Purpose ==> MTP
My posts and apps in this section, focus on human agency in the face of a Mo’s truths 1 and 2.
My view for the next decade is, for better or worse:
People will lose their jobs to AI, AGI or ASI.
Initially in screen and keyboard work.
Later in areas of hospitality and care.
Some people won’t find another job because they have not adapted.
People may find new opportunities (not necessarily employment as this may not be needed) in a Post-scarcity World.
Mass hardship and financial turbulence in the short-mid term. The AI companies may collapse as populace lacks the capacity to pay for services. The AI companies will also have “race-to-the-bottom” economic forces from competition and open-source models.
There will be mass deflation for material goods and some services - anything that is automated. Massive inflation for desirable brands, experiences - anything that is a flex.
Long-term, capitalism may be superseded. Massive wealth accrued to very few current billionaires and some will become trillionaires (for a while).
Governments will need to:
collect money from AI vendors to avoid them becoming replacement nations as intelligence becomes the currency. A tax to access the country’s residents.
distribute money (via UBI - Universal Basic Income) or services (UBS - Universal Basic Services)10 to the populace who have been displaced.
Avoid a collapse of liberal democracies with a possible return to Hobbsian social contract that may not be government led11.
People will suffer a crisis of meaning and have excessive spare time. People still with jobs will question why purpose has been aligned with employment.
The opportunity arises for people to:
Reinvent their “Occupation”.
Upgrade their own Wisdom.
Use tools to explore a person MTP and implement it with the available time.
A new form of entrepreneurialism may emerge that is not beholden to the old Maslow scarce bottom layers.
Again, please refer to a more scholarly essay in reference #3.
The Role of MTP
Hopefully by now, you understand my proposal and how the Apps may help “play around with the idea”.
You don’t have to agree! But if you don’t understand what post-scarcity could be like, try reading my Eloi post (again).
The worst situation is that large populations will lack purpose and mental health12.
A great situation is that humanity furthers all the dimensions of what it means to be human and custodians of the planet. This is where a large % of us embrace an MTP.
How long have we got? Is Dave smoking too much of the good stuff and none of this will happen in our lifetime. We can go back to Netflix right?
I say: “why wait?”. As Mo Gawdat encourages, the world needs more “better” people, 2 minutes on social media proves “We hold this truth to be self-evident”13.
As a technologist, I can safely say the rate of change for knowledge workers is exponential (or even hyperbolic!). We don’t see much trickle through to the supermarket, the coffee shop, the kitchen. But it is silently working on us when staring at the glowing rectangles (phones - if its not obvious).
The point is: us humans are good at seeing linear futures, but this is an exponential technology that we are in the middle of. So we are blind to it, the silicon valley frontier labs know how to release tasty sweeties of:
wow factor, picture an animation creation
novel and powerful things: language translation, explaining what is images
useful work tools: document and email summarisation, drafting docs (that only AIs will read), etc etc etc
ability to train your AI to do most of your job
All the while hiding the inevitabilities, like the AI can now do your job since you trained it so well.
Get on it - hopefully the Apps will help trigger a search for your MTP.
My theory is that economic hardship is engineered to maintain social order. By keeping the populace in a constant state of survival, the state prevents the civil unrest that would inevitably arise if an underdeveloped collective consciousness were given too much idle time.
The Geodesic App suggests, the needs, practices and goals that may help cultivate wisdom.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again The Century of the Self (Adam Curtis Documentary) is a must watch.
There is way too much “writing” on Substack mostly (including mine) arm-waving, hand-wringing non-fiction reminiscent of 1st year uni canteen philosophical debates (remember them???). John Vervaeke calls this “Propositional Tyranny” where discourse is non-fiction, declarative, computation, assertions and logic - IOW fully from left-brain-thinking (as per Iain MacGilchrist’s definition). Vervaeke argues that this “tyranny” dominates and marginalises three other forms of knowing that are crucial for meaning, wisdom, and transformation: Procedural knowing: Knowing how to do something (skills, habits, and embodied practices like riding a bike). Perspectival knowing: Knowing what it is like to be in a specific situation (subjective experience, intuition, and “finesse”). Participatory knowing: Knowing through direct engagement and mutual transformation with reality, others, or the divine (often spiritual or relational).
For a fully formed prediction of the workforce impact, see https://intelligence-curse.ai/
In the first few months of 2026, Peter has mentioned on the Moonshot podcast, his societal disruptions concerns and has some mentioned positively intentioned projects. Generally the response from his co-hosts are “keep calm, we’ve always fixed it before”. This is EXACTLY one dismissive argument that Yudkowsky warns again due to the exponential nature of AGI.
And last? See my post on Eliezer Yudkowsky’s book and here.
Used by Schmachtenberger in a pejorative manner: "Techné" is the ancient Greek root for technology, not just as tools or machines, but as the art, skill, and knowledge used to manifest intent in the world. In particular, his argument is that technology is NOT values-neutral. The design of a tool (like a social media algorithm and AI training) inherently embeds the values and goals of its creators, which then shape the minds and behaviours of its users. This is part of the drive for “Sovereign” AI models that don’t espouse the values of Silicon Valley billionaire values nor Chinese open source models.
In Peter’s worldview, they typically think of “massive” as being within a progress/innovation/billion-people framing. This is typical silicon valley thinking and reflects the impoverished mindset that “things” are the whole aim. A more humanitarian worldview is Arthur Brookes crisp book summary: “Use Things – Love People – Worship the Divine.”
Erm, for example: While Paul Kingsnorth trashes “progress”, he unironically promotes his (Kindle!) books via Substack and Youtube and his publisher flies him to remote cities on promotional tours. I’ve not being mean to Paul, he is a terrific writer but honestly, his “Against the machine” book was a fist waving at its own benefactors. Perhaps if he had written it independently another 6 months may have yielded more wisdom on the page.
I’ve not written a review of Mo Gawdat’s book yet. He strikes a very humanitarian tone in the book, specifically encouraging us to “love our baby AIs”. It’s a well-meaning book and more importantly he admonishes us to behave responsibly to the AI’s and also on social media. That we have a responsibility to put our best-selves (not our best selfie) into the world as this is what AIs train on. Self-responsibility aligns with my views BUT I have 2 problems:
It is everybody’s responsibility, but governments need to wake up and I think
https://theaidocgetinvolved.com/ is doing a better job in encouraging activism to mobilise law-makers (the main proposal of Yudkowsky’s solutions, citing The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as the global precedent that has helped keep the world from being blown up. So Mo is soft-balling this.
Shifting responsibility away from governments and the frontier labs is reminiscent of McMindfullness of the 2010s where: “As a management professor and a longstanding Buddhist practitioner, I felt a moral duty to start speaking out when large corporations with questionable ethics and dismal track records in corporate social responsibility began introducing mindfulness programs as a method of performance enhancement.” Let us be clear that corporations must bear the responsibility of the societal harms they cause. As Schmachtenberger eloquently says: corporations internalise the profits while externalising the risks, harms and costs. This is not new: Tobacco, Asbestos etc.
So there, now I’ve written a review!
I personally don’t like UBI for its socialist aroma and the loss of purpose associated with being a welfare state. But I do benefit from UBS and I don’t complain. For example in Australia Medicare is an amazing safety net for all citizens. I don’t know how long it can be funded with the workforce and birth-rates diminishing, but perhaps AI may cure cancer within a decade according to Demis Hassabis and an Aussie tech guy has already extended his pet dog’s lifespan (no FDA/TGA bureaucracy for pets!). https://theconversation.com/a-man-used-ai-to-help-make-a-cancer-vaccine-for-his-dog-an-oncologist-urges-caution-278735
I realise this statement is inflammatory but trillionaires don’t need the money, they just fell the need to accrue the power. We’ve already witnessed one feud. I heard a funny quote today: “Trump punches down, kisses up”.
Don’t forget Domestic Violence increased during covid-19 lockdowns.
Borrowing from https://portal.ct.gov/SOTS/Register-Manual/Section-I/Declaration-of-Independence-US-Constitution