Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be irreplaceable, especially now that AI is changing what we consider valuable.

For a long time, intelligence was something people paid a premium for. If you were smart, knowledgeable, or skilled, society rewarded you. Intelligence was scarce. But after using tools like ChatGPT, it feels hard to believe that intelligence will stay scarce for much longer.

Think about it: ChatGPT alone has made a certain level of intelligence cheaper than it has ever been. Five years ago, you would have paid a real amount of money to have someone tutor you, answer your questions, or explain concepts clearly. Now, anyone can get that instantly, at a fraction of the cost.

This trend isn’t slowing down. In fact, I’m pretty convinced it will accelerate. It’s The Bitter Lesson all over again. Large language models are becoming cheaper and more capable every year, pushing the cost of intelligence lower and lower. For someone like me, who went to university hoping that my knowledge and technical skills would set me apart, that is a worrying thought.

Honestly, I feel some existential anxiety about this. If intelligence itself becomes cheap, what does it mean to offer something useful to society? How do I make sure my skills and knowledge are still worth enough to earn a good living?

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that intelligence alone won’t cut it. What might stay scarce is identity. Human experience, taste, personality, the weirdness of a particular person: these are harder for machines to replace, no matter how intelligent they become.

Take Taylor Swift as an example. People aren’t drawn to her just because she is intelligent or talented, though she is. They are drawn to her as a person. Her identity, who she is and how she expresses herself, is the product. Taylor Swift is irreplaceable not because of her skills alone, but because of the human connection around her.

That’s the kind of scarcity that holds up even as technology advances.

So, where does that leave me? Right now, my skills and identity aren’t particularly unique. I am not providing anything very scarce. It’s a sobering realization, but also an important one. Maybe the way to stay valuable in this era isn’t just to become smarter, but to become more human: to express something authentic, relatable, or enjoyable.

I’m still figuring this out. But one thing seems clear: in a world where intelligence is increasingly abundant, identity might become the thing that matters most.