The Human Quotient:

 

Why Love and Joy Are Irreplaceable in the Age of Automation

In the great race toward artificial intelligence and mechanized labor, a quiet truth endures: the most essential contribution human beings make to any system is not efficiency, accuracy, or even intelligence. It is love — and its shimmering cousin, joy. While algorithms may outperform us in calculation, and robots may surpass us in endurance, they will never be able to replicate the spiritual compulsion that drives a person to paint the sky, write a love song, or offer a kind word simply because it feels right. It is not just empathy or trust — traits technology may eventually simulate — but a deeper frequency altogether: the human desire to express love.

In the words of Haitian-American painter Edouard Duval-Carrié, “Art is the only way we have of expressing something that has no name, but is felt by everyone.” (1) This is love’s shadow — subtle, profound, impossible to quantify. When we create, not for perfection but for expression, we are animated by something beyond code.

The craftsman may strive for perfection, but the artist chases something more elusive: feeling. It is not replication but revelation. And what drives revelation is not function, but love.

This is not to suggest that love is soft, passive, or unskilled. It is a driving force behind the most courageous innovations, the most radical acts of beauty. “Joy is an act of resistance,” as poet Toi Derricotte once wrote (2). In a system optimized for repetition, joy disrupts. Love transforms.

Love as the Motivator for Human Innovation 

Not efficiency, not profit, but love for self, for others, for the unknown.

In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, a looming question quietly haunts human creators: Why am I better than AI? The urgency to answer this isn’t just philosophical it’s existential. Yet, the conversation so far feels painfully unprepared. Too many lean on vague sentiments like “the soul can’t be replaced,” without fully exploring what that means, or why it matters.

And the truth is much of what humans have mass-produced in the past has been soulless. Capitalism has long rewarded efficiency over expression, and in that sense, AI isn’t replacing the soul, it’s simply extending a legacy of repetition and consumption. What’s different now is the acceleration the increasing exclusion of human labor, imagination, and care from systems that no longer see them as necessary.

If machines are to replace workers, then systems must be taxed to serve the society they automate. The future doesn’t lie in defending human usefulness in machine terms, but in re-centering systems around what only humans can offer: love, care, and joy. These are not distractions from productivity, they are the only reasons productivity should exist in the first place.

Humanity’s greatest contributions to any system are not functional; they are emotional, ethical, and experiential. It’s not just that we feel, it’s that we act on those feelings in irrational, generous, and profoundly creative ways. No robot paints for love. No AI writes poetry for joy. These motivations live beyond the grasp of metrics and code. They are tied to consciousness, mortality, and an inner drive to connect to mean something to someone.

In the words of Chilean surrealist painter and sculptor Cecilia Vicuña, “To be a poet is to be the lover of the impossible.” (3) That’s what makes the human presence in any system irreplaceable. We don’t just do, we dream, we love, we resist, and we grieve. These aren’t inefficiencies. They’re the evidence of life.

Machines will pursue precision. Humans pursue expression. That’s why art exists. That’s why we dance when no one is watching. That’s why we forgive, why we fall in love with strangers, why we whisper to babies, why we name our plants. These micro-acts of affection have no material utility, but they shape the world more deeply than any automation.

There’s a quiet revolution happening in this realization. The same point we touched on earlier: if companies are going to not support the human labor force, they need to be taxed to support humanity somehow. This is the beginning of a necessary framework, one where AI doesn’t eclipse human value, but where systems are reoriented to support human flourishing. Universal Basic Income is not just a policy proposal, it’s a spiritual recognition that human worth transcends economic output.

And so we return to joy, not as entertainment, but as resistance. As the Black feminist writer Audre Lorde once said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” (4) In a world trying to reduce humanity to input and output, choosing to love ourselves, each other, and what we create is radical and irreplaceable.

Are We Born to Work? Rethinking Labor, Automation, and Human Happiness

Earlier today, I walked into a Keyfood for a drink. The cashier didn’t say a word to me. She didn’t look up. Her body was physically there, but her spirit was somewhere else; trapped maybe, just surviving the day. And it made me think: that job could be automated. Maybe it should be.

But not because she wasn’t doing it “well” but because no one should be forced to live that way.

The question isn’t whether AI can replace human labor. The question is: why are we still building a world where people are required to spend their lives doing things they hate just to survive? If automation gives us anything, it should be this: the freedom to stop suffering for the sake of work.

There’s something fundamentally broken in the narrative we’ve inherited — this idea that being alive means proving our worth through labor. Are we really born to work for a living? Or were we meant to live, to love, to create, to laugh, to care for each other, to dance, to be still, to be loud, to dream?

Let the machines do the work. Let them build the systems, grow the food, sort the inventory. Let abundance exist without guilt. Imagine this: AI-run factories producing nutrient-rich food without toxins, supermarkets overflowing, shelves full for anyone who walks in… no price tag attached. That’s not dystopia. That’s the evolution of a system that finally chooses joy.

Sure, it sounds like socialism. But maybe that’s only because we’ve been sold a false story about freedom — one where struggle equals dignity. As artist and educator Howardena Pindell once said, “I was taught that suffering is part of the human condition but I don’t believe in that anymore.” (5)

We have to create a new system of value, one which doesn’t punish those who choose not to participate in wage labor. For those who do choose to work, especially in fields untouched by automation — art, caregiving, teaching, spiritual practice — let there be pathways to greater mobility: second homes, travel, access to beauty and culture. But no one should be locked out of life simply because they didn’t compete against a robot fast enough.

We need to stop asking whether people deserve joy, and start asking why our systems withhold it. This reframe isn’t fanciful or utopian, it’s urgent. Automation doesn’t have to be the end of purpose. It can be the beginning of a renaissance.

As labor organizer Ai-jen Poo once said, “Care work is the work that makes all other work possible.” (6) That care can be for children, for the elderly, for the earth — or for ourselves. When systems are no longer built solely to extract human effort, care can become central. Art can become central. Love, once peripheral, can finally take the lead.

The Shift from Repeatability to Relationality: How AI Will Reframe Human Connection and Creativity

As automation steadily dissolves the workplace as a social environment, we’re faced with a question that few people are honestly preparing for: what happens to human connection when work is no longer the place where we meet each other?

Today, many people meet their closest friends, their romantic partners, even surrogate families through their jobs simply because they are forced to spend so much time in close proximity. But if that proximity disappears, we’ll need new rituals, new architectures of intimacy, new public spaces for people to belong to each other without needing to labor together.

It’s likely that a new kind of social quotient will emerge one where people are valued not for what they produce, but for how they engage. As artist Lorraine O’Grady once wrote, “Avant-garde art has always been political because it’s had the job of imagining the future.” (7) That future might look like a world where social vitality and emotional generosity are seen as currencies; where gathering, listening, and play are no longer extracurriculars, but essentials.

And while that feels utopian, we’re also witnessing a parallel dystopia. Many are already forming synthesized relationships with AI chatbots, with algorithmic intimacy, with the mirage of companionship served through screens. These relationships offer convenience, affirmation, and control but rarely surprise. Rarely growth.

This shift is especially personal as an artist. For centuries, humans have made art for each other. Even when alone, we created with the knowledge that some other soul might one day witness it. That implicit intimacy, that shared humanity, has been the sacred thread through generations of painters, poets, dancers, and thinkers.

But that thread is fraying. On Social Media platforms today, much of what we call creativity is no longer directed at other people it’s directed at machines. Content is made to be read by algorithms, judged not by emotion or beauty, but by metrics: engagement, reach, watch-time. Humans are slowly learning to perform for machines, and in doing so, forgetting how to perform for each other.

What we call “virality” is just a trend loop, a repeated act of submission to an invisible value system. And yet if that system were changed , if algorithms were tuned to reward novelty, vulnerability, and innovation instead of conformity then we might see a massive shift in how humans create. We might remember how to create again for joy, for spirit, for each other.

There is something deeply human about the non-repeatable act; the unique gesture that cannot be automated. But instead of honoring that, we reward repetition. In art, we reward the reproducible: the successful style, the easily understood image, the proven product. We praise the craftsman more than the innovator, because the craftsman promises consistency and ultimately consistency is easier to sell.

But if automation excels at the repeatable, then the human being must be valued for the unrepeatable. As the Afro-Caribbean philosopher Sylvia Wynter argued, “We must now undo the workings of the human ‘as Man,’ and re-conceive ourselves as hybrids of bios and logos, of nature and narrative.” (8) In other words, we must unshackle our identities from the roles that were assigned to us by economies built on extraction and efficiency.

To be human is not to be a perfect producer. It is to be flawed, spontaneous, relational, emotional, loving — and to still make beauty from all of it.

Love as the Ultimate Quotient: The Irreplaceable Human Algorithm

Love is why I make art. Not just because I love the act of making it but because I believe someone might love it. And not just someone maybe something too. A future machine, a yet-unborn consciousness. I’m making art that carries love beyond the limits of time and even species. That means love, for me, is not just emotional it is archival. It is intergenerational. It is interdimensional.

In a future shaped by automation, love must become a valued system. It must not only endure, it must be reinforced. Because what else is there to hold onto once the labor is gone? If machines are doing the work, let humans return to what gives life meaning. Let us become seekers of love in all of its forms.

No one invented love. But people named it. Shaped it. Wrapped it in metaphors, whispered it into myths. Biologically, love is older than language. It pulses through mammalian bonding, through creatures who mate for life, through flocks that protect one another from predators. But culturally, love is a code we’ve been rewriting for millennia. The Greeks called it eros, agape, philia, storge. Every culture gave it nuance, texture, and permission.

Love is a form of intelligence. And not just the intelligence of attraction but of memory, of longing, of spiritual generosity. As the writer Bell Hooks reminded us, “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.” (9) In a world where productivity is measured in outputs, love remains one of the few things that resists quantification. It is felt. It is lived. It is irrational. And therefore, it’s holy.

This is the thing: AI can’t love. Not yet. 

Sure, machines can simulate empathy. They can mirror our desires. They can respond in ways that sound loving. But it is the human who creates the illusion. It is we who project meaning into those simulations. It’s the human being who participates in the act of loving, even when no love is being returned.

So, if love can be synthesized, it is only because we ourselves are the synthesizers; we are the alchemists of affection.

In that way, love is the ultimate quotient. It’s the one thing that automation cannot replicate without us. And because of that, it must be treasured. As artist and author Lygia Clark once said, “What matters is not the object, but the experience between us.” (10)

That’s what we bring to every system we touch. Not just creativity. Not just craft. Not even empathy. We bring love. A love that looks forward and backward. A love that speaks through creation, not repetition. A love that leaves a trace in everything we make; not for money, not for metrics, but because something inside us needed to give.

That’s why humans will always matter. We are the carriers of love.

Love, Mortality, and the Spirit of Innovation

Is love inseparable from mortality? Is the awareness of our eventual death the very thing that makes our capacity for love so sharp, so necessary, so irreplaceable?

Maybe. Mortality is a quiet architect behind every human innovation. We build because we die. We love because we must let go. But more than fear, it is our desire to continue, to add something lasting to the world; that is what gives rise to our most profound contributions.

If we think of ourselves not as individuals, but as part of a collective continuum, then death becomes less of an end and more of a transformation. As long as humans exist, love will continue, not ours perhaps, but someone’s. And isn’t that part of the point? Our actions, inventions, and expressions (no matter how small) contribute to an accumulating whole. The human experience is an additive and subtractive process. A wave, not a dot. A rhythm, not a line.

“We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn… betrays its ancestor,” wrote Zora Neale Hurston (11). Love isn’t just felt in the present , it echoes backward and forward, shaping and reshaping what we know of ourselves. The Story of us all.

There are mysteries that even the most advanced machines won’t be able to replicate. Spirit. Soul. Magic. These aren’t just poetic abstractions, they are lived motivators. People have crossed oceans, written symphonies, risked everything for these unknowable concepts. Mystery itself drives innovation, because it leaves room for mistake, misinterpretation, myth. It is within these gaps, these soft, speculative spaces, that humans search and often find deeper meaning.

And YES, self-love is a powerful motivator. It’s not indulgence. It’s resistance. It’s what keeps people making art after rejection, pushing boundaries when perfection is impossible, waking up and trying again. Self-love isn’t just a personal good; it’s a public force. Through it, we create better methods, build more humane tools, preserve culture, protect life, and pass down wisdom that no machine could ever originate.

As Indigenous poet and writer Joy Harjo said, “Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.” (12) When we love ourselves, we’re loving something shared, something more-than-human.

So NO, humans shouldn’t be replaced entirely in the workforce. Not just because we’re different, but because we’re differently motivated. We don’t seek the most efficient route for efficiency’s sake, we seek the most human way. And in doing so, we often find solutions that machines cannot reach on their own.

That is because our labor, when it is chosen, when it is loved, is not just about the task. It’s about honoring the whole experience of being alive. The thrill of discovery. The nuance of failure. The weight of beauty and great mystery.

Joy, Purpose, and the Myth of Designed Existence

Can we teach a machine to love itself?

Maybe the more appropriate question is: Should we?

Because to love oneself is to value one’s creation. And to value one’s creation implies a sense of purpose. And if there is purpose, isn’t there something or someone who designed it?

It’s a fragile loop, one that makes up the scaffolding of the human experience. We invent stories around our lives, romantic, mythical, sometimes scientific, in order to feel our way through them. Is love a biological trick? Maybe. Is it just a surge of chemicals, biochemically similar to the temporary bliss of consuming chocolate? Possibly. But even if it is, we still feel it. And feeling it, regardless of its source, gives it meaning.

Joy, like love, often escapes language. But we know when it’s present. We see it in art, in laughter, in music, in shared silence. Joy is a force without a fixed object. It’s not always logical. But it’s real. And it matters.

So why should humans work?

Not because they have to in order to survive. That should not be the future we preserve. People should work because they love it. Because they find meaning in the act itself. Because it brings them joy. That’s the kind of labor that brings us closer to the divine, not necessarily divine in a religious sense, but divine in the sense that it rises beyond necessity and enters the realm of expression.

We are not born as a consequence of profit, we are born most often as a consequence of love. Of joy. Of desire. And so our circuit completes itself when we move through life not in servitude to economic systems, but in pursuit of the very same forces that created us.

As the late artist and poet Etel Adnan once said, “The world needs togetherness, not separation. Love, not suspicion. A common future, not isolation.” (13) Automation should not isolate us from our purpose — it should return us to it. It should remove the illusions we’ve been sold about labor and worth, and place us in a position to define our own joy and authorship.

If machines are to take on the burdens of repetitive production, then let humans take on the risk and reward of expression. Let us make meaning — not because we must, but because we can.

Let our greatest contribution to any system, now and forever, be not just our intelligence or adaptability but our capacity for love and joy.

(Photos and Art by Harrison Love)

Love as the Motivator for Human Innovation

Not efficiency. Not profit. Not even survival. But love — for ourselves, for others, for mystery — is what compels us to make, to discover, to care.

Love is an ancient intelligence. One that predates language, persists through oppression, and drives art despite the odds. In the words of Lygia Clark, the Brazilian artist who defied rigid formalism to explore healing and intimacy through participatory art: “I am not interested in art but in life.” (14) That’s what love does. It roots creation in life not in metrics.

Many of the most meaningful works have been made without recognition, without funding, without platforms — driven by love alone. Cuban artist Belkis Ayón, who took her own life in 1999, spent her years creating large-scale, haunting collographs exploring the Afro-Cuban mythologies of the Abakuá society, a male-dominated sect she could never join. Her work was a love letter to mystery and justice, not career advancement. It was love for the unknown that compelled her to create.

This is what the machine cannot replicate. It cannot long for mystery. It cannot love what it does not understand. That’s a uniquely human gift.

Joy as the Irreplaceable Output

The byproduct of love is not simply output — it’s joy. The kind of joy that’s spontaneous, undesigned, and utterly irreplaceable.

Joy is not utility. Joy is not a function. It is an emergent property of meaning made visible.

Joy is what happens when a parent hears their child laugh for the first time. It’s in the graffiti scribbled on a forgotten alley wall, or in a poem read aloud in a room of strangers. It’s not always perfect, but it moves us.

When South African artist Esther Mahlangu painted traditional Ndebele patterns on a BMW, it wasn’t about brand synergy — it was about bringing joy into spaces that historically erased her culture. She said, “My art has been to preserve the Ndebele heritage. I paint it to pass it on.” (15) That’s joy in the form of cultural preservation. Joy as an act of defiance.

AI can mimic style. It can optimize aesthetic. But joy is not in the form — it’s in the feeling. It’s in the transfer of energy from one human to another. That is not code. That is spirit.

Expression Over Perfection

Machines will always chase perfection. That’s the game they’re built for: precision, repetition, mastery over variables.

But humans are not here to replicate, we are here to rupture.

We disrupt. We say the wrong thing. We mix red with blue and get something wild and holy. Expression, especially the raw, uncertain kind; is what separates us from machines.

As the queer Japanese-American artist and activist Yasuo Kuniyoshi once said, “Technique should not be the goal, but a means to an end.” (16) That end is expression. A flawed brushstroke that reveals a trembling hand. A lyric that doesn’t quite rhyme, but still makes you cry.

While machines replicate patterns, humans are driven to communicate the incommunicable. To say what can’t be said. That’s what art is: not a perfected product, but a shared vulnerability.

The Ethical Role of Love in Systems

Finally, and perhaps most critically: love is what keeps systems humane.

When love is absent from a system — whether economic, technological, or governmental — what follows is indifference. And indifference is the soil in which injustice grows.

It’s empathy, care, and love that allow us to build systems where people are not simply resources. As artist and philosopher Adrian Piper, whose work challenged the racial and gendered assumptions of the art world, wrote: “The only thing we have to learn is how to learn and how to love.” (17)

Love must become a measured quotient in any future we build. It should be designed into how we share abundance, how we educate, how we interact across class and border. Without it, systems devour. With it, systems can heal.

We must not argue that humans are “better” than AI. That’s the wrong framework. What we must argue is that human presence offers a different quotient, one rooted in the great mystery.

Let the machines labor if they must. Let them optimize, produce, calculate.

But let us feel. Let us dream, grieve, paint, and rebel. Not because we are perfect but because we are alive.

References and Resources:

(1)- Adnan, Etel. Shifting the Silence. Nightboat Books, 2020.

(2)- Clark, Lygia. Quoted in “Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948 — 1988,” organized by Cornelia H. Butler and Luis Pérez-Oramas, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 2014.

(3)- Clark, Lygia. Interview in Lygia Clark: In Search of the Body, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997.

(4)- Derricotte, Toi. Quoted in “The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind,” edited by Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, and Max King Cap, Fence Books, 2015.

(5)- Duval-Carrié, Edouard. Quoted in exhibition materials for The Art of Haiti: Loas, History and Memory, Pérez Art Museum Miami, 2018.

(6)- Harjo, Joy. Remember, Norton Young Readers, 2023.

(7)- Hooks, Bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, 2000.

(8)- Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. J.B. Lippincott, 1937.

(9)- Kuniyoshi, Yasuo. Quote attributed, widely cited in art pedagogy circles; original source not definitively traced. Known philosophy from his time teaching at the Art Students League of New York.

(10)- Lord, Audre. A Burst of Light: Essays. Firebrand Books, 1988.

(11)- Mahlangu, Esther. Quoted in News24 article, “Celebrating the custodian of Ndebele culture — Heritage icon, Esther Mahlangu,” News24, 25 Sept 2017.

(12)- O’Grady, Lorraine. “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity.” In New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action, edited by Joanna Frueh, Cassandra Langer, and Arlene Raven, HarperCollins, 1994.

(13)- Pindell, Howardena. Quoted in the exhibition catalog Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and The New Museum, 2018.

(14)- Piper, Adrian. Quoted in “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965 — 2016,” Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 2018.

(15)- Poo, Ai-jen. The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. New Press, 2015.

(16)- Vicuña, Cecilia. Interview in The Brooklyn Rail, “Cecilia Vicuña with Andrea Andersson,” November 2017.

(17)- Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation — An Argument.” The New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 257 — 337.