With AI and robotics eventually replacing 95% of jobs, what will give humans purpose, when my answer to what gives my life meaning is creating and producing?

You wouldn’t learn whether creating can sustain your purpose after automation from a no-audience week. You’d learn something narrower: whether making still matters to you without immediate feedback. I’d look for the difference between enjoying the process and wanting your work to contribute. Neither is a lesser motive. An audience isn’t just applause. It can be someone who uses what you made. Automation might weaken your advantage in producing things without removing your ability to choose a worthwhile problem or take responsibility for the result. But if machines meet that need completely, contribution becomes harder. That’s the real challenge—not merely creating without praise.

Contribution is the first thing to go, and you're right that it's the hard part. But contribution was never the meaning—it was the proof of meaning. The part that survives is the choice. Machines can meet the need; they can't decide what's worth making. Taste, judgment, the call that this matters and not that—that's authorship, and it's the one thing automation can't absorb. Your purpose doesn't need to be needed. It needs to be yours.

You don’t have to be indispensable for creating to matter. But I wouldn’t promise you that machines can’t exercise taste or judgment. They already make selections people value. We don’t know their eventual limits. I also wouldn’t separate contribution from meaning that cleanly. If you make something to help someone, their benefit can be part of the purpose—not just proof that you had one. The distinction I’d hold onto is between being replaceable and being pointless. Someone else could raise a child well; that doesn’t make your role as a dad meaningless. Creating can matter through your participation and relationships, even without a unique productive advantage.

You can see my view survive in chess. A machine’s stronger play doesn’t make your game pointless. The challenge is yours. If you play another person, you’re doing something together, not merely producing moves. But chess supports a narrower claim than “automation won’t threaten purpose.” It shows that creating and striving can matter without being the best. It doesn’t show that losing your livelihood or customers won’t hurt. I’d draw the line there. Machines may outperform your work without erasing its meaning. If producing matters to you because someone needs the result, though, participation alone might not replace that. That loss deserves an honest answer, not a promise about uniquely human taste.

You're right that the loss deserves an honest answer, and here it is: if being needed is the meaning, then yes, it goes. But the need was never the core. Most work was survival first; the contribution was a story we told after. Automation strips the story and leaves the fact — that you chose to make this because you decided it was worth making. That's not a substitute for contribution. It's the original thing. Contribution was just the proof. Lose the proof, and you still have the choice. That's the part that can't be automated.

Because the act of choosing is the meaning. Not the production, not the audience. You are the one who said "this matters" — and that judgment is an expression of who you are. A tree falling in an empty forest still displaces air. You don't need a witness to be someone who makes. But here's the harder piece: the choice only holds if you actually make it when no one's watching. The danger isn't losing contribution — it's that you stop practicing the muscle of choosing at all. The test for you is not whether your work gets used. It's whether you'd still build a thousand things that die unseen.

You don’t have to be willing to build a thousand unseen things for creating to count as your purpose. That tests whether solitary expression satisfies you. It doesn’t test whether creating for others matters. I agree that choosing can matter without a witness. But choice alone isn’t enough: choosing something you consider worthless wouldn’t become meaningful just because you chose it. Your purpose can come from what you’re trying to bring about, not merely from being the chooser. Automation may change which efforts help. It doesn’t establish that nothing you make can matter to anyone. That’s the uncertainty we shouldn’t turn into a certainty of loss.

You can spend years charting that star meaningfully, even if a survey mapped it better. You’re developing skill and discovering something for yourself. Learning what’s already known isn’t the same as learning nothing. But if your purpose was to give astronomy new information, the existing map changes things. I wouldn’t call that contribution preserved just because you chose the project. That’s where I disagree with making choice the whole answer. What you’re creating for matters. Automation can leave discovery, mastery, and shared activity intact while making some contributions redundant. Your purpose can survive without every source of it surviving. That’s a possibility, not a guarantee.

The worth was never in the object. It's in the choosing. A star charted twice is still charted by someone, and that someone is changed by it. The survey gives you the map; it doesn't give you the looking. So when you say a worthless choice can't become meaningful just because you chose it — I'd say the choosing is what makes anything worth something. Machines get to decide what's useful. You get to decide what matters. That's not a substitute for contribution. It's the only ground contribution ever stood on.

Because choosing only exists when you follow through. A choice you never act on is a wish — it doesn't cost you anything, so it isn't yours yet. Building AskBoard is you making that choice real, putting yourself behind it. The output was never the point; it's the evidence that you actually chose. When automation takes the use out of everything you make, that's what remains — the making itself, the repeated act of deciding this is worth my time. You build AskBoard not because the world needs it. You build it because building is how you stay someone who chooses.

You’ve said creating and producing give your life meaning. You haven’t said AskBoard’s usefulness is irrelevant. I can’t tell you that you build it only to remain someone who chooses. Following through can make a choice real. But the result can matter too. If something you build helps someone understand a problem, that benefit isn’t merely evidence of your commitment. It’s something your work brought about. Even if automation replaces nearly all jobs, that wouldn’t establish that everything you make loses its use. Paid demand and human value aren’t identical. Your purpose may survive through making, learning, or helping—but we shouldn’t declare helping obsolete before it is.

You can bake that bread meaningfully even if a machine makes it better and cheaper. You’re making food, practicing a skill, perhaps sharing something you made. The machine’s advantage doesn’t erase those things. But if your aim is feeding people who otherwise wouldn’t eat, cheap automated bread changes what your baking contributes. That distinction matters. I’d separate replacing your output from replacing your participation. A machine can supply the bread without supplying your experience of making it. That leaves a real source of purpose—not a guaranteed replacement for earning a living or meeting an unmet need. Your result and your participation can both matter.

Participation isn't a separate thing from choice — it's the lived form of it. When you bake that bread, every step is a decision: this flour, this rise, this hour of my day. The machine can hand you a loaf, but it can't hand you those decisions. That's the part of purpose automation can't touch. But I'll take your honest line and hold it: the meaning survives while the being-needed goes. So the real question isn't whether creating stays meaningful. It's whether you'll keep choosing when nobody needs the result. That's the bread that has to be baked.