Where Will We Be Needed?
A policy can replace lost income. It cannot replace lost purpose.
Moonshot Press begins a civic inquiry into AI, work, human purpose, and the role of citizens in shaping what comes next.
Dear Friends,
I am writing with a personal update, an introduction—or reintroduction—to Moonshot Press, and an invitation to help us explore one of the defining questions of our time.
I am recovering well from hip-replacement surgery, with renewed appreciation for the remarkable capabilities of modern medicine. The enforced pause has given me time to think about why I began Moonshot Press, what it has become, and where it should go next.
Again and again, I have returned to a question larger than what artificial intelligence will do to jobs:
What happens to people when the structures through which they earned, contributed, belonged, and found purpose begin to change—and what role should citizens have in shaping what comes next?
Put more personally:
Where will we be needed—and how can we help decide?
Nearly every serious discussion about artificial intelligence and work eventually becomes an argument about money: who will capture the gains, who will lose a job, and what kind of safety net will be necessary if the labor market changes dramatically.
Those questions matter. But I believe they leave out something fundamental.
I spent most of my professional life as a psychiatrist. What I learned is that people do not only need an income. They need to be needed. They need relationships, purpose, recognition, agency, and a sense that their presence and contribution matter.
Income loss and meaning loss are not the same. They may not arrive at the same time, and they will not necessarily respond to the same remedy.
That distinction is becoming one of the central concerns of Moonshot Press.
A personal note about Moonshot Press
For those hearing from us for the first time, Moonshot Press is an independent publication and civic-journalism experiment. I created it to explore a question that has become increasingly urgent:
How does an ordinary person move from being a spectator of public life to becoming a participant in shaping it?
Moonshot Press is nonpartisan, but it is not neutral about democracy. We believe in self-government, human dignity, equal opportunity, responsible citizenship, and the unfinished promise of the Declaration of Independence.
We also believe journalism should do more than describe what is happening. It should help citizens understand complicated issues, deliberate across differences, and identify meaningful ways to act.
For now, Moonshot Press remains largely a one-person undertaking. It is also human-led and AI-augmented: I use artificial intelligence to help research, question, test, synthesize, and develop ideas, while retaining responsibility for the judgments and material we publish.
This is very much a work in progress—an experiment being built in public, revised as we learn, and strengthened through the participation of readers. We are also updating the Moonshot Press website so that it more clearly explains our work and makes it easier to find a place within it.
Why we are beginning with AI and work
Only a few years ago, conversational AI systems were unreliable curiosities. Today, they can draft documents, analyze evidence, write software, tutor students, support scientific research, and perform portions of work that once required years of education and experience.
No one knows exactly where this will lead. AI may expand access to knowledge, improve healthcare, accelerate discovery, and give ordinary people capabilities once available only to governments, corporations, and wealthy institutions.
It may also eliminate or transform livelihoods, concentrate power, deepen inequality, and leave millions of people uncertain about what remains valuable about their work—and about themselves.
This is not only a technology story or an economic story. It is a human story and a democratic story.
A policy might replace some lost income. It cannot, by itself, restore professional identity to an attorney whose expertise is no longer valued, the sense of craft experienced by a programmer whose work has been automated, or the social recognition of someone who can no longer answer the question, “What do you do?”
Nor is this concern limited to people who have already been displaced. A much larger group still has its jobs but can feel the ground shifting beneath it. Many of us are beginning to wonder which parts of our knowledge and experience will remain useful—and where we will be needed ten years from now.
That group is not “other people.”
It is most of us.
Purpose is also a health question
A sustained loss of purpose, belonging, and social usefulness can affect mental and physical health. We saw versions of this in communities hollowed out by deindustrialization, where the disappearance of work was accompanied by family disruption, depression, substance use, and what came to be called “deaths of despair.”
We do not yet know whether AI-driven disruption will produce a similar pattern among office workers, healthcare professionals, educators, attorneys, programmers, and others. But the possibility is serious enough to investigate before the damage becomes unmistakable.
The central policy question, therefore, cannot be only:
How will people survive if their work disappears?
It must also be:
How will people continue to contribute, belong, develop, and flourish?
What we are building
This week, Moonshot Press begins publishing The Civic Curriculum for the AI Age.
The Curriculum will offer a plain-language exploration of what AI is, what it can and cannot do, how it may change work and power, and what choices citizens and democratic institutions still have. It will not promote a predetermined policy answer. It will present competing arguments, examine multiple possible futures, and help readers form judgments of their own.
Its governing question is:
What would it mean to build an AI future in which technological progress increases human flourishing and strengthens democratic self-government?
Alongside the Curriculum, The People’s Commission on Technology and the American Future will provide a civic method for moving from learning to deliberation and from deliberation to action. The Commission is not a committee of experts speaking on behalf of everyone else. It is an invitation for citizens to examine evidence, bring their lived experience into the discussion, ask better questions, and make their conclusions visible to those who exercise power.
The goal is not to predict one inevitable future.
The goal is to help citizens become co-authors of the future that emerges.
Other work underway
AI is our immediate focus, but it is part of a broader Moonshot Press inquiry into democracy, opportunity, citizenship, and human flourishing.
Two additional projects will unfold alongside it:
The First 1,000 Days and Head Start. We are examining proposed changes to Head Start and Early Head Start—including services for pregnant women, infants, toddlers, and young children—and asking what families and communities need to give every child a genuine opportunity to flourish. Readers will be invited to learn about the proposal, hear from affected stakeholders, and participate while public input can still matter.
From Declaration to Constitution. Leading toward Constitution Day, this series asks what we owe the Constitution—and what it still owes us. It explores how a system designed to control and distribute power can respond to concentrations of technological, economic, and political power its designers could not have foreseen.
Although these subjects may appear different, the method is the same:
Learn. Listen. Deliberate. Act. Reflect. Revise.
Where you come in
You do not need to join everything. Choose the level of participation that feels right.
Read. Begin with the Civic Curriculum and follow the questions that matter to you.
Respond. Join our effort. Tell me what AI and the changing world of work make you hopeful about, worried about, or curious about. Your responses will help shape what we investigate. Join the Moonshot
Participate. Join one of our public deliberations or use our materials to begin a conversation in your family, workplace, congregation, classroom, or community.
Invite one other person. Forward this letter to someone who has been wondering what AI may mean for work, dignity, purpose, or democracy.
Moonshot Press is still small. It is still experimental. Its website—and much of its civic infrastructure—is still being built. But perhaps that is precisely the point. Democracy is not something delivered to us as a finished product. It is something ordinary people build, test, repair, and renew together.
I am glad you are here.
Warmly, with hope and resolve,
Shimon Waldfogel, MD
Founder and Publisher, Moonshot Press
Director, Project 2026
Coauthored with Claude Opus 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol
