Skip to content
All articles

Time to Build the Better Future

The age of AI does not have to be the age of human diminishment.

· Jacques Camier, founder · SustainAI.global

The loudest voices right now are telling a story of loss.

AI will take the jobs. Automation will hollow out meaning. The future belongs to the machines, and humans will be left managing the decline. Scroll long enough and you can find elegant arguments for why abundance is a myth, why coordination is impossible, and why the smartest move is to prepare for managed contraction.

That story is incomplete.

It treats the future as something that happens to us instead of something we still get to shape. It underestimates the deepest human capacities we have: resilience in adversity, and the creative spark that invents, builds, solves, and overcomes. Again and again, people have looked at incomplete, broken, or unfinished worlds and refused to stop there — choosing instead to fill them with better work, better organizations, and better reasons to show up.

We are living in the age of AI. That is not a threat to be managed. It is the greatest expansion of human leverage in history. The question is no longer whether intelligence will become abundant. The question is whether we will use that abundance to shrink human possibility or to multiply it.

At SustainAI Global we have chosen the second path. We call the destination Viatopia — a term from William MacAskill’s research — not a finished utopia, but a living waystation: a civilization deliberately oriented toward human flourishing, meaningful work, planetary care, and partnership with powerful intelligence. A place from which near-best futures remain open.

I have written about that orientation before: first in Viatopia-like, which explains what SustainAI Global actually stands for without utopian promises; and then in Imagining Viatopia, which sketches the kind of society we are aiming toward. Both essays remain the fuller account of the vision behind this work. We use MacAskill’s term in that spirit: a waystation that keeps near-best futures open, not a claim that perfection has arrived.

To make that real, we built a map.

The Organizational Atlas

Twenty domains. Nearly five thousand careers. Not a nostalgic list of what already exists, and not pure science fiction. A concrete invitation to the work a flourishing human–AI civilization will actually need.

  • Energy and Natural Resources that deliver abundance without ruin.
  • Circular systems that turn waste into feedstock.
  • Agriculture that feeds people and restores land.
  • Manufacturing that is flexible, repairable, and clean.
  • Built environments that are beautiful, healthy, and resilient.
  • Transportation and logistics that move people and goods with minimal burden.
  • Trusted computing and telecommunications as true infrastructure.
  • Artificial intelligence designed to strengthen human agency rather than replace it.
  • Robotics that extend reach into the dangerous and the distant.
  • Space systems that expand the frontier while protecting the only living world we currently have.
  • Healthcare and social assistance that prevent, restore, and accompany.
  • Education that develops wisdom, character, and lifelong capability.
  • Finance and real estate that serve productive human ends.
  • Professional and scientific services that solve hard problems.
  • Trade systems that are accessible and increasingly circular.
  • Hospitality, arts, and culture that enrich the human experience.
  • Faith communities and spiritual life that tend meaning, conscience, and the inner life — whether through relationship with God, reverence for life and the universe, contemplative practice, or other paths people walk in search of what is sacred.
  • Civic and voluntary organizations that build trust between the individual and the state.
  • Government that secures rights and stewards the common.
  • And the quiet, essential administrative work that keeps every organization functioning.

This is not a job board. It is a provocation. Every role is an argument that the future still needs human judgment, human presence, human creativity, and human care — amplified, not erased, by intelligence systems.

Critics will say the numbers are ambitious. Good. Ambition is the point. The alternative is to accept a smaller story about what humans are for. We reject that story.

Explore the full catalog in the Organizational Atlas. For deeper researched role profiles, see Future Jobs.

Why This Matters Now

The data is clear that generative AI exposes hundreds of millions of tasks. Exposure is not destiny. The World Economic Forum’s own scenarios still allow for tens of millions of net new jobs by 2030 if we choose deliberate creation over passive displacement. Demographic pressure, youth unemployment, and tightening entry-level pathways make the choice urgent.

We do not have to choose managed decline. We can choose catalytic growth.

That requires people who will start the companies, design the training pathways, build the institutions, and show up for the work that does not yet fully exist. The Atlas is not a prediction of what the market will automatically produce. It is a call for builders to make those roles real.

The Invitation

If you are a founder: look at the domains and ask which missing organizations the world actually needs. Build them.

If you are an educator or trainer: take the roles and turn them into pathways people can walk.

If you are a worker or student wondering what still matters: the map is here. Meaning did not disappear. It is being redistributed into forms that require more judgment, more collaboration with machines, and more care for people and planet.

If you are a critic who believes this is naïve: we hear you. The risks are real. Coordination is hard. Capture and concentration of power are serious threats. We still choose to build. Optimism is not denial. It is the decision that a better future is worth the difficulty.

Our principles are simple and non-negotiable:

  • Choose optimism.
  • Work on hard things.
  • Let purpose guide the work — the intersection of what excites you, what you are becoming skilled at, and what serves others.
  • Serve something bigger than yourself.
  • Act with humility.
  • Pursue truth.
  • Respect freedom of conscience.
  • Persevere.

Technology changes. These do not.

We are not waiting for permission. We are not waiting for perfect models or perfect policy. We are publishing the map, inviting collaborators, and treating the creation of meaningful work as one of the highest-leverage activities of this decade.

The age of AI does not have to be the age of human diminishment. It can be the age in which we finally build the organizations, the roles, and the culture that match the scale of the tools we now hold.

The Atlas is live. The domains are open. The careers are named.

Now it is time to build them into reality.

The better future will not arrive by default. It will arrive because enough people decided it was worth constructing.

Let’s begin.

Resources

  • Viatopia-like — What SustainAI Global actually stands for, and why our work is viatopia-like, not utopian.
  • Imagining Viatopia — A longer vision of meaningful work, clean energy, governed AI, and human dignity.
  • Organizational Atlas — Twenty domains and nearly five thousand career catalog entries.
  • Future Jobs — Researched job profiles and workforce pathways.

References & citations

  1. MacAskill, William. "Viatopia." Forethought Research, January 7, 2026. https://www.forethought.org/research/viatopia
  2. World Economic Forum. The Future of Jobs Report 2025. World Economic Forum, 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/
  3. Goldman Sachs. "Generative AI could raise global GDP by 7%." Goldman Sachs, 2023. https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/generative-ai-could-raise-global-gdp-by-7-percent

Related SustainAI Global essays:

When citing this article: Camier, Jacques. "Time to Build the Better Future." SustainAI Global, July 30, 2026, https://sustainai.global/articles/posts/time-to-build-the-better-future/.