I was recently at a networking event (blegh), the structure of which involved a panel discussing their involvement in AI and their utopian visions for AI and the world. One of the panelists pointed out how peculiar it is that despite resource sufficiency around the world -- or at least enough material means to end hunger and support a basic, non-impoverished quality of life given the appropriate distribution of wealth -- people are still unhappy. Well... duh! Resource sufficiency on a material plane alone is insufficient for human happiness.

Let's scope the discussion a bit to a society I'm familiar with -- the Bay Area in California. Let's exclude folks below the poverty line even (sorry y'all, it's not that I don't love you but I need to make a point here). We'll consider only folks living above the poverty line in the SF Bay Area.

Now this is all anecdotal, so forgive the lack of science, but most people I talk to feel like they don't make enough money. I've had several heart-to-heart conversations with people 30 years out of their Harvard MBAs and a brilliant career that's allowed them to raise children in the area, buy large homes, and have largely unconstrained day-to-day expenses via a multi-C suite career, and yet they still feel like they do not have enough. Wild! Absolutely wild. The Bay Area truly is the home for money dysmorphia (© Sasha Bayan 2023).

On a personalized individual level, we can observe that raising the lifestyle ceiling is a large part of creating a sense of not having enough. If you're a deca-millionaire, you're wishing you had a $500 million exit to "truly" not have to work. If you've got the $500 million exit, you're looking to the Bezos space cadets in the billionaire club and bemoaning the lack of access, settling instead for precarious submarine journeys (too soon?). The comparison game and the ever-presence of someone further up the chain is the fuel of money dysmorphia.

The extremes often shed light on most of us in the meat of the bell curve -- and the lesson we can extract from the top is that upward comparison in the absence of gratitude and presence for one's own life leads to dissatisfaction. The not-enoughness is relative to other humans once an individual is resource-sufficed -- fed, housed, etc.

So why should we be surprised that people are still unhappy even if we are more materially prosperous than ever? We are social animals whose psychology is shaped by our social environment. We are innately hierarchical (sorry egalitarians and lovers of direct democracy, but hierarchy is baked into our brains with ancestral ties back to lobster days; see Jordan Peterson's chapter "Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back" in 12 Rules for Life). An innately hierarchical brain assesses threat and safety based on where we stand in the hierarchy. If we constantly observe people higher than us, an instinct of lack, a fear response is triggered and can put us into a mild or full-on fight or flight state in order to protect ourselves. When a group of humans all look in one direction, any individual human is compelled out of a safety drive to also look (they could be looking at a saber-toothed tiger for all we know, so best be informed).

Here's the point I'm trying to land: ignoring social psychology as a factor of wealth misses a fundamental part of the social good equation. Using AI to make people's lives better without reducing the extreme gaps of wealth and poverty will not increase human happiness and flourishing. A fundamental root of human unhappiness -- the moldy nest that is the gap between wealth and poverty -- remains despite technology. Despite the fact that most of us can afford a car (not possible 100 years ago, arguably improving human life several fold by allowing us to travel, get food, entertainment, etc.), overall human happiness does not meaningfully increase because the gap remains. AI will serve us similarly -- it will improve our quality of life, our comfort, our abilities to do different things. But y'all social gooders out there, remember that increasing human material means without addressing the social dynamics will always leave room for unhappiness and malcontent to fester when people know that they are at the bottom half.