AI Will End Poverty. But Will We Want a World Built on Equity?
- S B
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
First Class and the Illusion of Scarcity
I was recently booking a flight and paused. If the airplane only makes one trip and all passengers arrive at the same time, why do we have tiers of seats from Economy to First Class?
Our society is built on scarcity and powered by money. With enough money, a person can buy a First Class ticket and sit in an arguably more comfortable seat. Like many other people, I don’t really need the leg room. Yet I would still arrive at the exact same destination, at the exact same time, as everyone else in Economy.
First Class isn't really about the seat. It's about what the seat represents. It signals that you've climbed the ladder. When we are born without wealth, we are measured by our ambition. Ambition is how we climb the ladder, improve the lives of the next generation, and in some cases “rise out of poverty”.
Redefining Poverty in an AI-Powered World
But what exactly is poverty? Why does it exist? Does it have to exist? Who decides what counts as “poverty” versus “surviving”? Having traveled quite a bit, I have seen wealth in places considered poor and poverty in the most sophisticated boardrooms.
The definition itself is simple enough. Generally speaking, poverty is a lack of resources to meet one’s basic needs. My claim is this: AI will eliminate its very existence. In an AI-powered world, a large share of work becomes optional, much like growing your own vegetables. Some people still do it, but you do not have to in order to eat. When work is no longer required for survival and basic needs can be guaranteed to everyone, poverty disappears.
This is not some distant utopia or sci-fi fantasy. It's already happening. Consider parking attendants, car wash attendants, airport cashiers. Many replaced by automation in just the last decade, before generative AI even arrived. Carvana sells cars from vending machines. As AI advances, the trend accelerates: labor becomes more specialized, more optional, and basic goods cheaper to produce.
In an AI-abundant world, where goods and services can be produced at near-zero marginal cost, money starts to lose its power as the gatekeeper. Without money controlling the distribution of resources, poverty ceases to exist. Citizens can live off AI-created abundance, distributed through programs like Universal Basic Income (UBI).
The end of poverty is not the hard part. The hard part is asking ourselves if we can be happy in a world without First Class. The hard part is whether we will accept a world built on equity.
Equity, Equality, and a One-Class Airplane
Equity is not equality. Equality gives everyone the same resources. Equity gives everyone the same opportunity to succeed. AI offers the possibility of both. It can be accessible to all (as long as we build it that way) and can give people the same tools and baseline resources.
In such a world, there is one type of seat on the airplane. There is no need to compete for resources to sit in First Class. We all arrive at the same place.
But is that what we want? Can we live in a world where a 99 on a test does not open exclusive doorways to scholarships and an Ivy League education? What happens to ambition when we can all live comfortably within our means while robotics and AI do most of the labor?
Ambition Without Winners
These questions aren't abstract. They shape how we'll live. What will we do with our time? Some will still work, but work will take on a new meaning. Will the status assigned to certain professions still be there? Will the doctor be judged for their compassion rather than their tax bracket? Will we be comfortable obtaining PhDs purely out of curiosity, even if the title grants no special authority?
These are the great questions of the AI revolution.
And perhaps as you read this, you consider me a dreamer. If so, I am in good company. As John Lennon put it in Imagine, “you may say I’m a dreamer,” and he was right about one thing: imagining a different world is the first step to building it.
Ending Poverty Is a Policy Question
AI will not fall freely like rain from the sky. It will be shaped and controlled by governments, policymakers, and corporations. But only to a degree. Once the tools exist, people will pick them up. They already have.
When I walk through airports and see ads for Gemini everywhere, and kids casually using ChatGPT on their phones, I see a future where people adopt and embrace these tools as they wish. They use them to make their lives better, and at their best, to improve humanity.
AI gives us the technical ability to end poverty. The remaining question is not whether the technology can do it, but whether we will choose to design, govern, and share it in a way that lets everyone fly in the same class and still feel whole.
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"AI is the tool, but the vision is human." — Sophia B.
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About the Author
Sophia Banton is an AI leader working at the intersection of AI strategy, communication, and human impact. With a background in bioinformatics, public health, and data science, she brings a grounded, cross-disciplinary perspective to the adoption of emerging technologies.
Beyond technical applications, she explores GenAI’s creative potential through storytelling and short-form video, using experimentation to understand how generative models are reshaping narrative, communication, and visual expression.
