The West faces a series of serious economic challenges. But, we are told, there is one enormous hope for the future of the global economy: artificial intelligence. AI will skyrocket economic productivity; it will provide us both information and innovation; it will solve insoluble problems and shrink time frames to the infinitesimal. Marc Andreessen, investor extraordinaire, sums up the vision: “We believe we are poised for an intelligence takeoff that will expand our capabilities to unimagined heights. We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone — we are literally making sand think.”

By the available evidence, Andreessen is right: AI will be extraordinary. Already, AI can write better than most writers, think better than most professors and innovate better than most businesspeople. The question is: What comes next? For Andreessen, the answer is simple: whatever we want.

This is indeed an inspiring vision. And yet an antagonistic strain has emerged amid this generalized optimism. That strain takes two forms — one economic, the other spiritual.

The economic strain suggests that AI will rob us of our jobs, reducing us to dependence on the welfare state. Historically speaking, this is unlikely: There will always be things that humans can do that AI can’t. The computer revolution didn’t destroy American jobs, and neither did the automotive revolution. And if AI becomes all-encompassing in its capacity, as Andreessen explains, that would imply such an unprecedented level of prosperity that scarcity itself would become a thing of the past.

The spiritual strain of the anti-AI argument is different: It suggests that better technology will not solve our spiritual problems. If AI is better than we are at everything — if we suddenly find ourselves with hours more of free time and nothing to occupy it; if our skills are so diminished next to those of AI that any effort seems enervating; if AI makes it so easy to answer our questions that we never have to expend effort at all — then what do we do with our lives?

The reality is that this line of argumentation isn’t wrong, so far as it goes. It just doesn’t go very far. AI, like any other technological development, shouldn’t bring us happiness; it should reduce misery. These aren’t the same thing. It’s obviously far more difficult to be happy when we’re experiencing misery.

AI certainly raises challenges in every field from parenting to business to art. But our true societal challenges aren’t with AI; they’re with us. In an increasingly atomized age, it’s easy to blame the machines for our spiritual failures. But we are responsible for our own fulfillment and happiness. We could start by encouraging more people to fill their lives with the nonmaterial things that matter: church and family, predominantly. The alternative — stopping technological progress in its tracks — risks increasing misery without increasing happiness.