If you asked me in the recent two years what i think about AI and the future of humanity, I routinely asked back – have you read Manna?
When Marshall Brain penned Manna in 2003, it read like a speculative fable—half warning, half dream. Two decades later, this short novel reads less like science fiction and more like a mirror held up to our present. In the age of generative AI, ubiquitous automation, and a deepening conversation about universal basic income (UBI), Manna has become unsettlingly prescient. Its core questions—What happens when machines take over work? Who benefits? Who decides?—are now the questions of our time.
The Premise: Dystopia or Utopia?
Manna presents two divergent futures springing from the same source: automation. In the first, American society embraces algorithmic management systems like “Manna,” designed to optimize labor in fast food and retail. These systems strip workers of autonomy, reducing humans to programmable labor nodes. Eventually, displaced workers are warehoused in government facilities with minimal rights and maximum surveillance.
The second vision—dubbed the “Australia Project”—offers a counterpoint: a post-work society where automation liberates rather than subjugates. Here, humans live in abundance, guided by brain-computer interfaces, pursuing meaning, community, and creativity. In both cases, the robots are the same. The outcomes are not.
Technology: From Manna to Modern AI
In Manna, the namesake system automates management by giving employees minute instructions: “Take two steps forward. Pick up the trash. Turn left.” It’s a crude but plausible stand-in for early workplace AI.
Fast forward to today. We now have machine vision, voice recognition, and AI scheduling systems actively managing logistics, retail, warehousing, customer service, and even hiring. The leap from “Manna” to real-world tools like Amazon’s warehouse algorithms or AI-powered hiring software is not conceptual—it’s chronological.
But today’s generative AI adds a new dimension. Large language models don’t just manage human work—they can replace it. They can write, code, design, and even make judgments, blurring the line between assistant and actor. This is no longer about optimizing physical labor; it’s about redefining knowledge work, creativity, and decision-making. In Manna, workers lost control of their bodies. In our era, we risk losing control of our voices, thoughts, and choices.
Societal Implications: Surveillance, Control, and Choice
Marshall Brain’s dystopia emerges not from the technology itself, but from who controls it and to what end. The core mechanism of control in the book is not violence, but data-driven predictability. People are kept compliant not through force, but through optimization.
This insight feels eerily familiar. Today, workplace surveillance software can track eye movements, keystrokes, and productivity metrics. Gig economy platforms use opaque algorithms to assign tasks, suspend workers, or cut pay. The managerial logic of Manna—atomizing labor, maximizing efficiency, removing agency—is increasingly embedded in our systems.
And yet, we still have a choice.
The Australia Project, Manna’s utopia, is not magic—it’s policy. It’s a society that chooses to distribute the fruits of automation broadly, instead of concentrating them. It’s a place where AI augments human flourishing rather than optimizing it out of existence. The implication is profound: the same AI that can surveil and suppress can also support and empower.
How It Maps to Today’s AI Debate
We’re currently living through the early moments of a global debate: What kind of future are we building with AI?
- If AI replaces jobs, do we build social systems like UBI to ensure dignity and meaning?
- If AI amplifies productivity, do we let a handful of tech owners capture all the surplus?
- If AI becomes a decision-maker, who governs the governance?
In many ways, the world is caught between Manna’s two futures. Some nations experiment with basic income pilots. Others double down on productivity surveillance. AI policy frameworks are emerging, but few are bold enough to ask what kind of society we want—only how to mitigate risk. But perhaps the greater risk is to automate our way into the future without choosing where we want to go.
The Deeper Lesson: Technology Is Never Neutral
Manna is not a story about robots. It’s a story about values. The same tools can lead to oppression or liberation depending on how they are deployed. In a time when technology often feels inevitable and ungovernable, Brain reminds us: inevitability is a narrative, not a law. The future is programmable, not just by code, but by collective will.
If Manna offers any enduring wisdom, it is this: The systems we build are reflections of the intentions we encode into them. Machines will optimize—but only for what we ask them to. The question is not whether AI will change society. It is whether we will change society alongside it.
Final Thought
In the race to adopt AI, we must not forget to ask: For whom is this future being built? We stand on the threshold of either a digital dictatorship or a renaissance of human possibility. Manna showed us both. It’s now up to us to choose which chapter we write next.