# Not Even Your Life Is Wanted: Human Worth in the Machine Age


# Not Even Your Life Is Wanted Anymore

> https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20251111-7801146

The news says robots are about to be deployed at scale.
The article puts it decently: this is 'high-quality development,' this is 'intelligent upgrading.'
But I keep feeling there is something cold in those words.
Like a celebration for a funeral nobody was invited to.

There was a time when, however miserable things got, those at the bottom still had one presentable skill — trading their lives for money.
Down the mines, hauling rebar, into the chemical plants.
The pay was low, but as long as you were willing to grind, you could always live like someone who was 'useful.'
Their lives were their last bargaining chip.
Now even that chip is being taken over by machines.

Human progress always comes with some people going silent.
When machines can go down the mine, can weld, can run day and night without stopping,
those who lived by their sweat can only retreat into the shadows.
They are not dead, but they are not quite living either.
The brighter the city lights, the fainter their shadows.

Sometimes I think what machines replace was never work,
but a person's sense of being valued.
Does someone who is no longer needed still count as alive?
The answer, of course, is yes.
But that way of living is more like a patient with ALS.

Some will say new jobs will appear.
Robot maintenance technician, say. Data labeler.
But someday even those jobs will not be left for you
After all, programmers — the crowd said to be the smartest people alive — are busy doing the foolish work of revolutionizing themselves out of a job

In a few more years, perhaps, no one will die in mines, in collapses, in explosions.
That sounds wonderful.
It is just that people will no longer be living anywhere either.
After all, nobody is wanted anymore