By Roli Shukla
“All this is so unnecessary,” I have often found myself saying these days. Either age has caught up with me, or there is something wonderfully strange about human beings, I think.
We spend enormous effort producing things we do not strictly need. We decorate and colour our clothes. We paint walls that are already perfectly functional. We carve temples, build domes, compose music, tell stories, write poems, invent games, celebrate festivals, collect beautiful objects, make jokes, dance without needing to reach anywhere, and spend hours and ages imagining worlds that do not exist.
A bird builds a nest because it needs a home. A human being may build a palace and then cover its walls with paintings of imaginary worlds.
What is the point?
Perhaps this is the mystery of being human begins.
Many among us think of the “necessary” as serious and meaningful and the “unnecessary” as frivolous. Food is necessary; a beautifully arranged meal is unnecessary. Shelter is necessary; architecture is unnecessary. Communication is necessary; poetry is unnecessary. Transportation is necessary; decorating a vehicle is unnecessary. Information is necessary; storytelling is unnecessary. And yet, if we removed everything that is unnecessary, would we still recognize human civilization? Perhaps not. The question, therefore, is not whether unnecessariness is necessary. It clearly has been. The deeper question is: How much unnecessariness is necessary for a meaningful human life—and when does it become an issue?
Human beings have never lived by necessity alone. Some of the greatest human achievements began as apparently unnecessary acts of curiosity.
Why look at the stars when one is trying to grow crops? Why ask what matter is made of when one can simply use objects? Why compose musical notes when spoken words would allow people to communicate? Why paint animals on cave walls when the animals could simply be hunted? Why rub stones to see if it sparks? The human mind does not merely ask, “What do I need?” It also asks: Why do I need it and how do I get what I need? And what if I get it? These little questions have enormous consequences.
Science begins partly with curiosity that has no immediate practical purpose. Philosophy begins by questioning things that ordinary life allows us to take for granted. Art begins when humans refuse to accept that an object, sound, movement, or experience needs to have only one function.
A child builds a castle from blocks without needing a castle. A child invents rules for an imaginary game and then enthusiastically obeys them. Children make drawings of creatures that do not exist. From the perspective of immediate survival, much childhood play is unnecessary. From the perspective of human development, it is anything but unnecessary that may therefore be the laboratory in which the future is quietly rehearsed.
Imagine a civilization stripped of everything that cannot justify itself through immediate utility. There would be no poetry. No classical music. No sculpture. No decorative architecture. No mythology. No festivals. No jokes. No children’s stories. No gardens designed simply for beauty. No embroidery. No rangoli. No elaborate wedding traditions. No Diwali lamps beyond the amount of light strictly required. No Ganesha made beautiful simply because people enjoy making and seeing beautiful things. Much of what we call culture would disappear. Human inheritance is not made only of tools. It is made of meanings. A tool tells us how human beings solve a problem. A poem tells us how human beings experienced a problem. A machine records what humans can do. A story records what humans have wondered about. A civilization that inherits only its necessities may survive. But a civilization that inherits its unnecessary creations may remain recognizably human.
This does not mean that everything unnecessary is valuable. Here lies the difficulty.
Human beings have an extraordinary capacity not only to create unnecessary things but also to manufacture unnecessary desires. An ornament can become an obsession with status. Festivals can cause excessive consumption. Entertainment can become addiction. Fashion can become disposable waste. Technology can become a machine for producing distraction. Advertising can persuade people that yesterday’s perfectly adequate object has suddenly become insufficient. The unnecessary then changes character. It no longer says: “Let us add beauty to life.” It says: “You are incomplete unless you buy this.” That is a very different form of unnecessariness. The first expands human experience. The second exploits human dissatisfaction. This distinction may become increasingly important in the age of artificial intelligence.
AI has traditionally been presented as a technology for solving problems.
But what happens when AI becomes extraordinarily good at creating things that are unnecessary, and nobody actually needs?
Imagine an AI capable of producing an infinite number of songs, paintings, videos, jokes, virtual worlds, advertisements, games, characters, stories, architectural designs, and personalized experiences. The cost of creation may become almost negligible. We may then enter an era of industrial-scale unnecessariness. The problem will no longer be our inability to create. It will be our inability to decide what needs to be created.
Human beings have always used play and entertainment for relief. But historically, entertainment had natural limits. A book had a finite number of pages. A theatre performance ended. A festival lasted for a few days. A conversation eventually became silent. But now AI has the potential to remove many of these limits. It can keep producing. Personalized amusement can become endless. If every moment of boredom can instantly be eliminated, will human beings lose the ability to be bored? If technology becomes exceptionally good at filling every empty moment, it may accidentally make mental emptiness unavailable. And without some emptiness, there may be less room for imagination.
We often worry about plastic waste, energy consumption, and depletion of natural resources. But there is another kind of waste: attention waste. Human attention is finite. Every unnecessary notification, meaningless video, repetitive image, synthetic argument, algorithmically generated joke or artificially manufactured controversy competes for a small portion of the human mind. AI could make this problem much larger. The danger is not that AI will create frivolity. Human beings have always created frivolity. The danger is that AI may create frivolity on an unprecedented scale.
There is equal danger on the other side. If we become obsessed with efficiency, productivity and measurable usefulness, we may destroy precisely the qualities that make life worth living. Should a child be allowed to draw a ridiculous purple elephant? Yes. Should an adult occasionally write a silly poem? Certainly. Should buildings sometimes be beautiful rather than merely efficient? Yes. Should AI be allowed to create things simply because they delight, amuse or provoke imagination? Probably yes.
The human problem is not unnecessariness itself. It is unexamined unnecessariness. A frill on a dress may be delightful. A thousand disposable dresses produced merely to keep people buying may be wasteful. A joke can bring relief. Ten thousand algorithmically generated jokes competing for attention can become noise. Video games can develop imagination and cooperation. An endless stream of engineered digital rewards can consume a life. The distinction is not simply between necessary and unnecessary. It is between meaningful excess and empty excess.
There is another paradox. Beauty rarely solves a problem. And yet human beings have repeatedly sacrificed time, labour and resources to create it. Why? Because beauty tells us that existence is not merely a problem to be solved. A flower is not more beautiful because it is more productive. A song does not become valuable because it increases GDP. A child’s laughter does not need an economic justification. A festival does not have to produce something measurable. Human beings need spaces in which they are not merely workers, consumers, competitors or problem-solvers. The unnecessary gives us such spaces. It reminds us that life is more than a utility.
The arrival of AI therefore requires a new cultural discipline. We should not ask only: “Can AI create this?” We should also ask: “Why should this be created?” And perhaps even: “What happens to us if we create too much of it?”
These are very different questions.
AI may make it possible to create a personalised movie for every mood, a song for every minute, a virtual friend for every loneliness and an artificial amusement for every moment of boredom. But the ability to eliminate every inconvenience does not necessarily create a better life. Some inconveniences teach patience. Some silences teach listening. Some boredom produces imagination. Some difficulties produce character. Some unnecessary activities produce joy. The challenge is to know the difference.
Perhaps humanity needs a new principle for the age of AI:
Do not ask whether something is necessary before creating it. Ask whether its existence adds meaning, beauty, understanding, connection, discovery or joy. If an AI-generated object exists merely to capture attention for another five minutes, perhaps we should question its value. But if it helps a child imagine, a scientist explore, an artist experiment, a lonely person connect, a teacher explain, or a community becomes more efficient, its “unnecessariness” may have a deeper purpose.
The unnecessary can therefore be divided into two broad worlds. One kind says: “Life can be more beautiful than it needs to be.” The other says: “You must consume more than you need in order to feel complete.” The first is creativity. The second is clutter.
So, how much unnecessariness is necessary? Perhaps just enough to keep us human. Enough play to prevent life from becoming mechanical. Enough beauty to prevent utility from becoming tyranny. Enough imagination to allow the future to surprise us. Enough mischief to challenge rigid thinking. Enough fantasy to help us imagine possibilities. Enough silence to prevent all this creativity from becoming noise. And enough wisdom to know when to stop.
The future may not belong to the society that creates the most. It may belong to the society that learns what is worth creating. AI will give humanity an extraordinary power: the power to manufacture possibilities almost without limit. That makes restraint more important, not less. For thousands of years, human beings struggled because they could not create enough. The coming challenge may be very different. We may live in a world where we can create almost anything—and therefore must learn to choose what deserves to exist. Perhaps this is the true lesson hidden inside the question of unnecessariness. Human beings do not need to eliminate unnecessary things. They need to cultivate it wisely.
A world without unnecessary things might be efficient but unbearably sterile. A world overflowing with unnecessary things might be colourful but unbearably noisy.
So, to sum up all arguments and counter my rhetoric of “All this is so unnecessary” I can say that perhaps humanity’s inheritance will not be preserved by choosing between necessity and unnecessariness. Perhaps it will be preserved by learning the art of knowing which unnecessary things are worth passing on. And that may be one of the most important questions the age of artificial intelligence will force us to ask ourselves.
(Roli Shukla is an Educator and Author based in Thane, Maharashtra.)
