How Might ChatGPT Change Our Values?

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” — Mark Weiser, Xerox PARC (1991)

Three decades after Weiser predicted the invisible ubiquity of computing, his prophecy has become daily reality. ChatGPT and other large-language models, LLMs, make cognition feel elastic. New technologies have the power to change our values. For example, the camera let us see worlds we'd never encounter, inspiring empathy and activism but also breeding voyeurism and desensitization. How might LLMs shift our values?

From Output to Judgment

In early 2023, UBS reported that ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months, the fastest adoption rate in digital history. Within a year, 43 percent of college students admitted using it for coursework. Across Fortune 500 firms, AI assistants now draft emails, contracts, and strategy decks, the first drafts of thought itself.

When a machine can produce articulate answers on demand, the scarce human skill is no longer recall or speed. It is discernment, the ability to ask better questions and to judge what deserves trust. Pew Research found that 73 percent of U.S. adults worry AI will spread false information. In that climate, credibility becomes the new literacy. The next generation will not be praised for knowing facts but for recognizing truth.

From Originality to Authenticity

When you can generate art in seconds, what will remain valuable is the unmistakable human fingerprint: context, vulnerability, and lived experience. Consumers already reveal this shift. Just as they pay more for organic food because it signals care, they will soon pay more for human-made content that signals sincerity. In a world of synthetic voices, imperfection becomes proof of life. The next creative class will be more involved in curating meaning. Below I've added a quick example to illustrate. The image on the left is ChatGPT's interpretation of a lion door knocker with a flower in it's mouth. It's perfectly symmetrical and generated in 3 seconds. However, on the right is my imperfect metal art that required ~30+ hours. I researched lion anatomy, sketched the design, carved it in wax, created 3 different molds, burned the wax in the kiln, created more molds, poured aluminum at ~1400°F, removed the mold, sandblasted to polish, attached the hardware parts together, then finally brushed on a gold leaf finish. While my design is clearly less symmetrical, the experience creates a niche context.

From Effort to Responsibility

McKinsey projects that 12 million U.S. workers will transition to new jobs by 2030 because of automation. But the deeper transformation is moral. For centuries, we tied virtue to effort: hard work, long hours, visible struggle. If AI trivializes certain types of effort, what will define worth? Perhaps responsibility will. The dignity of labor may evolve into the dignity of choice, deciding which problems merit human attention. The cashier’s barcode scanner changed the work, but not the responsibility to serve the next person in line. So it will be with AI: automation changes the task, yet the duty remains.

Everyday Life: How Values Rewire Our Routines

• Education: Instead of memorization tools, families might invest in critical-thinking and AI-literacy coaching, training discernment rather than recall.

• Work: Employers will reward judgment and synthesis over rote output. The résumé line that matters may be “guided a machine to insight,” not “processed data fast.”

• Consumption: If AI plans our meals, trips, and shopping lists, convenience loses status. Consumers shift toward products of meaning, ethical brands, experiential purchases, identity-driven design.

• Relationships: In a sea of synthetic conversation, the scarce luxury will be unmediated presence. Silence, eye contact, handwritten notes, proofs of authenticity.

• Spirituality: When effort is easy, devotion will be measured by attention. The sacred may migrate from labor to mindfulness, from “What did I build?” to “What did I protect from automation?”

  
  

Different Cultures, Different Values

• United States & Western Europe: Productivity and competition dominate; AI adoption accelerates in desk jobs, and value gravitates toward speed and efficiency. Unfortunately, more "developed" countries like this usually see the benefits of AI after taking advantage of less financially stable countries. We outsource the dirty work of AI training to hungry third world countries and then dress it as a non-profit helping.

• Europe (Policy-Driven): The EU AI Act reframes trust as a consumer value.

• East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea): Integration happens at the collective level. China already embeds AI into commerce, education, and healthcare apps. Here, value shifts toward social harmony, collective progress, and precision.

• Africa: Across the continent, AI is a bridge to opportunity. From Kenya’s mobile banking models (M-Pesa) to Nigeria’s AI startups in agri-tech and medicine, adoption often begins where traditional infrastructure is weakest and resources are available. The moral question becomes access, ingenuity, and inclusion. In places where AI tutors reach students before textbooks do, the technology redefines fairness itself: knowledge as justice.

• Latin America & the Global South: Economic inequality and connectivity gaps slow deployment, but where AI takes root, from Brazilian logistics to Indian health diagnostics, it becomes a tool of empowerment rather than convenience.

The New Virtues of the AI Age

Across cultures, three values emerge as the moral compass of the next decade:

Old Virtue	Emerging Virtue	Why It Matters
Recall	Discernment	Knowing is cheap; judging truth is rare.
Originality	Authenticity	Infinite output demands human honesty.
Effort	Responsibility	Automation frees us to choose what truly deserves our labor.

Communication, too, evolves. The greatest writers once mastered eloquence; now the most trusted voices will master candor.

The Sacred After Automation

Meaning was once tied to effort: a monk’s handwritten manuscript was holy because it embodied time and devotion. If AI dissolves effort, what remains sacred? Perhaps the answer is attention, the deliberate act of caring in an age that automates everything but love. The risk is not that AI gives us too many answers; it is that we forget which questions are worth asking.

Our challenge, then, is to have better character than machines, because we won't out-produce them. It's a sobering reminder that judgment, authenticity, and responsibility are not byproducts of IQ, they are the proof of humanity itself.

Written by Sallie Oliver, Researched with GenAI