Humans Build Things. That's Not Going Away.

There's something about putting a seed in the ground and watching it become something that hugs a part of your brain no grocery store can reach.

Elon Musk recently compared having a job to growing vegetables in your backyard. His point: in 10 to 20 years, work will be optional. Why would you bother growing tomatoes when you can just go to the store?

Anyone who has eaten a tomato still warm from the sun would beg to differ.

But it's not even about the tomato. Honestly, Musk's metaphor makes my point better than his. People don't grow vegetables because it's efficient. They grow them because making something from nothing is one of the best feelings there is.

And that's true for work, too. Not all work. Not the soul-flattening, you-are-a-cog, clock-in-clock-out kind (gross). But the act of building something. Contributing to something. Bonding with the people you're building alongside. That's one of the most innately human things we do.

My co-founder and I both got laid off. Different companies, similar timing. We met in the aftermath and started building what eventually became Mirra. We didn't plan it. We just needed something to build. The instinct kicked in before the strategy did.

We are literally built for this

We call ourselves homo sapiens. Wise man. But there's an older concept that goes back to the 3rd century BC: Homo faber. Man the Maker. The idea that humans are more fundamentally makers than thinkers. Researchers have argued that making isn't just something humans happen to do. It's baked into who we are.

We make things, those things change us, and then the changed version of us makes new things.

That loop has been running for millions of years. Betting that AI is the thing that finally breaks it is a pretty big swing.

You know the IKEA effect? People who build their own furniture value it 63% more than people looking at the exact same thing pre-built. I believe it. I have an IKEA bedside table that has lasted longer than any IKEA bedside table has a right to. One of the drawers doesn't sit quite right because I didn't read the instructions. But I built it. And I actually love building things. It's like a giant puzzle. And the research says the effect only works if you finish. If you destroy it or leave it half-done, the magic goes away. Which makes sense. Half the fun is watching the thing take shape. But that moment at the end where you step back and go "hell yeah, I did that"? You can't automate that. I mean, a computer doesn't even care that it finished. You do.

And when we're deep in building mode, our brains go bananas. Flow states dump dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins into your system. Your inner critic gets voted off the island, if you will. There's a neurological thing called transient hypofrontality where the part of your brain that says "this isn't good enough" just... goes quiet. So you can keep making.

Your brain is literally designed to reward you for building things.

The part Musk completely misses

Here's what the "work will be optional" vision doesn't account for: building isn't a solo act. It never has been.

Even bonobos, one of our closest living relatives, share food with strangers from other social groups. No immediate benefit. No transaction. Just exchange.

Humans have been making things and exchanging them since before money existed. Before capitalism. Before any economic system we've ever named. In matriarchal societies, in barter economies, in communities so small nobody had a word for "market." People built things and traded them. Not because a system required it. Because that's how humans form community. That exchange is how we say I made this, and I see you.

Take away the ability to build alongside other people and the body notices. Cortisol spikes. Sleep deteriorates. Immune systems weaken. Depression and anxiety increase. Your body literally treats the loss of social connection like a threat to survival.

Same mistake, different font

You know what makes the same error as "AI will replace everyone"? "No one wants to work anymore."

Different font. Same intellectually lazy take on people underneath. "AI will replace everyone" assumes people are just output generators. "No one wants to work" assumes we're lazy unless coerced. Both miss the same thing. I mean, have you met people? We don't build to survive. We build because that's what we do.

But that drive has conditions. People need agency. Dignity. Work that actually matters.

What people are rejecting isn't work. It's dehumanization. Work that offers no autonomy. No craft. No connection to the outcome. No sense that you're building something that matters alongside people who actually see you. That's not laziness. It's a completely rational response to an environment that offers you nothing your brain is designed to seek.

And every company laying people off right now because "AI can do it" is making this mistake in real time. Candidly, it's dumb and shortsighted. You're reducing people to their output and missing everything else. The collaboration. The institutional memory. The relationships. The creative friction that only happens when actual humans build together. You don't get that from a model.

At least one person leading AI actually gets this

Daniela Amodei, co-founder and president of Anthropic and a literature major, said something in a recent ABC interview that I've been waiting for someone with her platform to say. She said the number of jobs AI can do without people is "vanishingly small." And then: "The things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important."

F***ing finally.

If you've been swept up in the doom and gloom AI headlines, do yourself a favor and read that again.

She talked about how studying the humanities will matter more as AI gets better at STEM. That understanding ourselves, our history, what makes us tick doesn't become irrelevant when the machines get smarter. It becomes the whole point.

That's the head of one of the most powerful AI companies in the world saying: the human stuff isn't the leftover. It's the main course.

And I think the hand-thrown mug proves it. A hand-thrown mug costs more than one from Target. You can feel the thumbprint in the clay. Something in us recognizes and values the evidence of another person's hands and effort and care. That doesn't go away because a machine can make a technically perfect mug cheaper and faster. If anything, it gets stronger.

People pay real money for ice sculptures that are literally designed to melt. Kids spend hours on sand castles that won't survive the tide. The value was never in the object lasting. It was in the fact that someone made it. That's the market nobody accounts for when they talk about AI replacing everything.

And here's the other thing. Humans love an underdog story. We always have. In a world where AI can do everything, the human who does it anyway becomes the underdog. And we will pull for that person every single time. The more capable the machines get, the more meaningful human effort becomes. The hand-thrown mug doesn't lose value when perfect machine mugs are everywhere. It gains it.

That's exactly what we bet on when we built Introve. Mirra doesn't ask people what's on their resume. It surfaces behavioral patterns through actual conversation, the stuff that made your best coworker great that never showed up in a job description. We built it because we believe the human stuff is the main course. And we think the companies that figure that out first win.

So here's where I land

I believe humans will keep building. I believe new kinds of work will show up that none of us can predict from here, just like they have after every automation wave in history. I believe the drive to make things and exchange them and build together is so deeply wired that no technology switches it off. Even in the most extreme version of the AI future, humans are going to find ways to create for each other. We'll invent new economies. New forms of exchange. That's what we do.

But I am not saying "don't worry about it." I'm saying the opposite.

How many times have you heard someone say, "it takes a village"? The problem is everyone wants a village but nobody wants to be a villager. And I'd argue that dissonance, wanting to receive community without contributing to it, is connected to the same hyper-individualistic current that's been eroding things for a while now. But that's a whole other blog post.

Community matters more right now than it has at any point in our lifetimes. Not community as a LinkedIn buzzword. Community as a practice. As the thing that actually carries people through transitions. The historical pattern says new work always emerges. It also says transitions can be brutal when nobody's paying attention to the people in the middle.

Here's what I do know. The drive to build is there. It's always been there. But it doesn't activate in isolation. It activates in community. In the exchange. In the showing up.

So the question isn't whether humans will keep building. It's whether we show up for each other while we figure out what comes next.

Further Reading

• Homo faber Revisited | Ihde & Malafouris on making as constitutive of human identity
• The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love | Norton, Mochon & Ariely's study on why we value what we build
• Flow States and Creativity | the neuroscience of building mode
• Self-Determination Theory | Ryan & Deci on autonomy, competence, and relatedness
• Daniela Amodei on ABC News | on why the human stuff becomes more important, not less
• Machines of Loving Grace | Dario Amodei's vision of a positive AI future
• Elon Musk on work becoming optional | the interview that started this