The Coming Sportsification of Humanity: How AI Threatens to Replace Human Value With Performance
The Law of Human Surplus Abilities
1. Machines Have Always Surpassed Us
When cranes and bulldozers arrived, humans stopped lifting stones for construction. Yet strength did not disappear. We turned it into spectacle: Strongman, Olympic lifting, CrossFit.
When the internal combustion engine made horses obsolete for travel, we didn’t abandon running or horse riding. Instead, we invented equestrianism, marathons and sprinting as sport.
When the camera automated realism, painters didn’t quit. They broke new ground in abstraction and modern art.
When computers crushed humans at chess in the late 1990s and 2000s, we didn’t stop playing. Chess became entertainment, streaming, and competition.
History shows a clear pattern: when machines take over, human skill retreats into sport, art, or ritual.
This feat is pointless in a world of forklifts - which is exactly why we watch it.
2. Why Surpassed Abilities Become Sport: Toward a Law of AI
Why does this transformation?
Identity – We celebrate what is uniquely human even if machines do it better. Watching a human push limits is more meaningful to us than watching a machine execute flawlessly.
Narrative – Sports give us stories of triumph, failure, rivalry, and sacrifice. Machines don’t have those. Humans do.
Fairness – Machines create asymmetry. A human vs. bulldozer is boring. But human vs. human is fair, uncertain, and dramatic.
Cultural Ritual – We ritualize lost skills as a way of preserving heritage. Even when no longer useful, they live on as symbolic demonstrations of resilience.
You could call this pattern the Law of Human Surplus Abilities:
When technology renders a human ability unnecessary, that ability tends to survive as sport, ritual, or art.
This is why strength, running, archery, painting, and chess all survived their obsolescence.
3. Sports (and Games) as Surrogates for Lost Purposes
Sports are not random pastimes. They are ritualized forms of once-essential activities:
Hunting → archery, shooting competitions, biathlon.
War → wrestling, boxing, fencing, judo, jousting… and now video games.
Transport → horse racing, equestrian, sprinting, marathons.
Strength labor → weightlifting, stone-lifting traditions, CrossFit.
Notice how war, once the central drama of civilizations, now often survives symbolically. Yes, we still have military conflict, but for most of us war is no longer a daily reality. Instead, we simulate it. First in sports like fencing, then in table-top war games, and now in video games.
From Age of Empires to Starcraft, from Call of Duty to Warcraft, entire genres of entertainment are dedicated to the strategy, tactics, and adrenaline of war - but without the blood. What used to be existential struggle has become spectacle, play, and competition.
4. Chess and the Kasparov Moment
Chess is the perfect warning sign.
In 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in a single game.
In 1997, it defeated him in a full match, 3½–2½, the first time a reigning world champion lost to a machine under standard tournament rules.
By the 2000s, commercial engines like Fritz and Stockfish were far stronger than any human.
Kasparov himself later admitted that computers were permanently better at raw calculation. But instead of dying, chess transformed. It became a spectator sport, a Twitch phenomenon, and a training tool. We no longer look to chess for cutting-edge strategy: we look to it for performance and entertainment.
Chess is no longer humanity’s frontier of thinking. It is humanity’s theater of thinking.
5. From Achievement to Spectacle
This pattern is comforting until you ask: what if AI pushes everything into entertainment or performance?
Strength is no longer “productive”: it is only sport.
Strategy in chess is no longer cutting-edge thinking: it is only entertainment.
Painting is no longer how we capture the world: it is only art.
Running is no longer transport: it is only competition.
Now imagine AI doing the same with writing, design, teaching, coding, or even research. Humans will still do these things, but the purpose will shift. Not to create value. Not to solve problems. Not to build civilization. Instead, to perform. To entertain. To play at being human while machines do the real work.
6. The Economics of Obsolescence
Consider the historical precedent of the aristocratic leisure class. For centuries, European nobility existed without "productive" work, finding meaning in ritual, culture, and performance. They weren't economically productive, but society supported them because they served cultural and ceremonial functions.
Are we creating a future where most humans become a kind of universal leisure class, economically supported but functionally obsolete, finding purpose only in performance and ritual?
The difference is scale. When only a small elite lived this way, society could sustain it. When everyone becomes economically unnecessary but culturally maintained, we face unprecedented questions about social organization, meaning, and resource distribution.
7. The Participation Pyramid
Not everyone displaced by technology becomes a performer. When machines replaced human strength, the vast majority didn't become Olympic athletes: they became spectators. This creates a pyramid:
Elite Performers: A small number who compete at the highest levels
Amateur Participants: A larger group who engage for personal fulfillment
Passive Spectators: The majority who consume rather than create
Applied to our AI future, this suggests most humans won't become elite writers competing in literary tournaments. They'll become audiences for AI-generated content and the few humans still performing these skills.
This raises a darker question: Is a civilization sustainable when most people are spectators to their own obsolescence?
8. The Coming Sportsification of Humanity
If the Law of Surplus Abilities holds true, then once AI surpasses us in a domain, humans will ritualize that skill into games, contests, or performances. Some possibilities:
Writing → Competitive Creativity
Imagine televised writing tournaments: speed-poetry contests, live “rap battle”-style prose duels, or audience-voted storytelling competitions. AI will write better novels and screenplays, but humans will keep writing for spectacle and cultural value.Coding → Hacker Games
AI will dominate production code. But humans may still compete in “live-coding battles,” bug-hunting competitions, or puzzle-based programming contests where style and cleverness matter more than efficiency.Law → Mock Trials as Sport
AI lawyers may argue cases more effectively, but humans could stage trial competitions - part debate, part theater, part entertainment. Law schools already have “moot court”; imagine that evolving into a professional spectator event.Science → Pop Science Showmanship
If AI runs most actual research, humans may still “perform” discovery: competing in science communication contests, public experiments, or simulated breakthroughs. Think of a Mythbusters-on-steroids sport of knowledge performance.Education → Edutainment Contests
If AI tutors outperform teachers, humans may keep the role of performance-based education: teaching competitions, charisma battles, “fastest math lesson in 5 minutes” contests.Knowledge → Pub Quizzes and Trivia Games
AI already mogs the world’s best trivia champions, crushing them with instant access to vast knowledge. But trivia nights at pubs are not going anywhere. Why? Because the point is no longer knowledge itself, but the ritual of competing, the fun of social play, and the performance of recall under pressure. Knowledge has become a game, not an advantage.
In each case, the function disappears (AI will do the work). What survives is the performance of being human doing the work.
9. Why Quizzes Will Flourish in the Age of AI
AI already mogs the best trivia champions, pulling up obscure facts at lightning speed. But this does not make pub quizzes irrelevant. It makes them more fun.
Because:
The stakes are lower: nobody actually needs recall anymore, so trivia becomes pure entertainment.
The drama is real: humans fumbling, arguing, and guessing is far more engaging than watching a bot spit out answers.
The social bond matters: pub quizzes are group rituals, and rituals thrive once stripped of their utilitarian purpose.
So instead of vanishing, trivia will likely become even more popular, the same way running, lifting, and chess exploded once machines surpassed them.
10. The Dignity Question
This transformation sounds almost pleasant until you confront the deeper implications: Can human dignity survive the loss of human usefulness?
Throughout history, human value has been tied to human capability: our ability to build, create, solve, and contribute. We derive meaning from feeling necessary. But what happens when we're not?
Some possibilities:
Optimistic View: Freed from utilitarian pressure, humans could pursue higher purposes: art, philosophy, relationships, spiritual growth. We might discover that our obsession with productivity was actually constraining human potential.
Pessimistic View: Without functional purpose, humans might lose motivation, meaning, and self-respect. A society of entertainers and spectators might lack the drive and purpose that historically animated human civilization.
Realistic View: The outcome will likely vary dramatically by individual, culture, and implementation. Some will thrive in a post-utilitarian world. Others will struggle profoundly with obsolescence.
Conclusion
Every past technology has pushed human skill from utility into art. AI threatens to accelerate this shift until almost nothing is left outside the domain of spectacle.
We must ask ourselves now: do we want a future where humans exist only as athletes, artists, and performers, applauded but unnecessary? Or do we demand a future where human ability still builds, decides, and creates real value?
The choice is not about whether AI will make us less valuable. The choice is whether we will accept being reduced to a side(shit)show in a civilization run by machines.
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Is this AI generated?