Let's imagine that the price of receiving a salary without working was the total surrender of your mind, because for centuries capitalism revolved around human physical strength, then computers arrived and the focus shifted to intellectual productivity, but now, as artificial intelligence slowly begins to take over both manual labor and part of cognitive work, a new dispute seems to be emerging, the dispute over the human mind.
In a scenario where machines produce practically everything, economic value stops being only in physical products, it begins to migrate towards something much more abstract, perception, digital presence, behavior and biometric data, money as we know it is changing, we are entering the era of the economy of maximum attention, a system where your brain stops being a work tool and becomes the most valuable currency on the planet (or a product, however you want to see it).
When everything is “abundant and free” thanks to artificial intelligence, the focus of capitalism changes, the product is no longer the car or the software, the product is you, and perhaps the most curious thing is to note that this has already begun, one of the best-known examples is the World Coin project, created by Sam Altman.
The official proposal seems relatively simple, creating a digital identity capable of proving that you are a human and an internet increasingly flooded by artificial intelligence, to do this, people from all over the world scan your own iris using metallic devices called Orbs in exchange for access to the system and distribution of cryptocurrencies, more than 17,000 million in various parts of the world have already delivered their ocular biometrics.
Recent partnerships with platforms like Tender show that validation of humanity is becoming the key to access the digital society, without your validated biological code you simply cease to exist for the economic system, there is a powerful evil logic behind it. In a future dominated by Generative AI, distinguishing real humans from artificial agents may become economically essential, with social networks, banks, dating apps and digital platforms slowly starting to rely on biometric validations to ensure that there is a real person on the other side of the screen.
Only perhaps this is just the first layer of the transformation, because the moment biological identity becomes economic infrastructure, your body data begins to have direct financial value and here the so-called attention economy begins to evolve into something even deeper, today companies like Apple and Meta are already developing devices capable of tracking eye movements with millimeter precision. Spatial computing glasses manage to understand exactly where you are looking, how long you stay looking at something and what stimuli capture your attention the most.
This reveals extremely intimate information. Neuro-scientists have already demonstrated that gaze patterns can anticipate interests, emotional impulses and subconscious decisions even before the person consciously perceives what they want, that is, your attention stops being just behavior and becomes raw economic data. Some platforms are already beginning to experiment with models where users are compensated fairly for the authenticity of their own digital presence.
Instead of selling only physical products, companies start to monetize real human engagement in environments infested by bots and synthetic content, in other words, you will be working for the algorithm just by looking at the screen, your focus is the new digital gold mining and perhaps there arises the most uncomfortable paradox of this future, this scenario creates a shadowy paradox to guarantee that citizens continue generating data to keep the basic income active. They will be programmed to trap your mind in infinite dopamine loops, if you disconnect, your flow of quantum dividends or digital currencies decreases.
Total freedom from physical labor can result in the ultimate psychological slavery, where humanity lives doped by synthetic entertainment generated by algorithms that feed on our biological reactions, not necessarily out of conscious evil, but because keeping humans connected becomes economically advantageous, thus, the same technology that promises to free people from repetitive work can end up creating another form of imprisonment, a constant psychological dependence on digital environments designed to capture human perception to the maximum possible extent.
From now on we will see in practice how all this is already happening.
