The End of the Human Battery

The End of the Human Battery:

AI, Consciousness, and the Choice That Is Ours.

By David E. Lloyd

A dear friend, intuitive guide and a co-founder of the Intersection Foundation, Kim Skief, recently shared with me a documentary that felt like it had emerged directly from the collective soul of what The Intersection Foundation is here to express. The film is called The Choice Is Ours, created by Roxanne Meadows and The Venus Project—a profound work of vision, science, and social conscience that reflects many of the very truths that have been arising in our own circle of thought, feeling, and creation.

It arrived just after I had written the following reflection:

 “AI will most definitely take our jobs—and I, for one, am ecstatic about that.

Because when we are no longer forced to serve as batteries for industry, something sacred reawakens in us.

We rediscover what it means to be human—not as machines of productivity, but as vessels of creativity, emotion, and connection.”

In that moment, I felt the veil thinning between two visions: the one I was beginning to articulate, and the one Jacque Fresco, Roxanne Meadows, and the team behind The Venus Project have long been stewarding. These are not merely ideas about economics or automation. They are about the reclaiming of our humanity from systems that have long reduced life to transaction.

---

A Civilization Beyond Survival

In the industrial age, and even through the digital revolution, the human being has largely been treated as a unit of labor. Our value has been tied to our productivity, our ability to “earn,” and our capacity to serve the machine. This has left little room for the sacred—little time for stillness, emotion, imagination, or deep connection.

But now, with the rise of AI and automation, we stand at the edge of a precipice.

Contrary to popular fear, AI isn’t here to destroy humanity—it may be here to liberate us. With intelligent systems taking over the repetitive, dangerous, or extractive tasks that once consumed our lives, we are presented with an evolutionary opening:

To rediscover who we are when we are not merely surviving.

To remember what it means to feel, create, and be in relationship with life.

To design a new world based not on fear and scarcity—but on awareness, compassion, and wisdom.

---

The Vision of The Venus Project

The film The Choice Is Ours (available here on YouTube) lays out this transition with breathtaking clarity. Produced and directed by Roxanne Meadows and Joel Holt, and rooted in the lifelong work of futurist and industrial designer Jacque Fresco, it is not just a documentary—it is a map toward a sane and soulful civilization.

The film moves through four stages:

The cultural and environmental roots of our crisis

The outdated systems of control we still cling to

The possibility of a resource-based, scientifically-aligned world

The urgent need to update not only our technologies, but our values

It argues that most of the world’s suffering—poverty, war, crime, environmental collapse—is not inherent to “human nature,” but is the result of obsolete systems. It makes the bold, necessary claim that we must redesign our world—not just its buildings, but its very architecture of thought and feeling.

---

A Bridge Between Visions

The synergy between this film and the work of The Intersection Foundation is not a coincidence. It is the sign of a converging emergence—a wave of consciousness remembering itself through many voices, from many directions.

Where The Venus Project offers a systems-level redesign grounded in science and engineering, we at the Foundation are exploring the emotional and symbolic renaissance that must accompany that change.

We ask: What happens to the human spirit when it is no longer burdened by labor?

What arises when we are free to feel, to heal, to create, to commune?

As AI and automation rise, we do not see the end of humanity—we see its rebirth. Not as worker drones, but as sacred creators. Not as competitors, but as conscious collaborators with life.

And in this remembrance, we find ourselves at the threshold of a new kind of civilization—one that Jacque Fresco dreamed of, and that all of us are now being called to co-create.

---

Gratitude and Invitation

To Kim—thank you for your intuition, your heart, and your deep listening. You felt the bridge between my words and this film before I could see it myself.

To Roxanne Meadows and the entire Venus Project team—thank you for stewarding a vision of beauty and sanity in a time of confusion and fear. Your work is a lighthouse.

And to every reader: The choice is ours.

Will we cling to the old identity of being batteries for broken systems?

Or will we awaken to the truth of who we are—and help design a world where no one is left behind?

---

With love and emergence,

David E. Lloyd

The Intersection Foundation