James Mannix Burke of York is a web developer who recently served as a U.S. Senate page.

“Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind,” Ralph Waldo Emerson declared in 1841. That line has never felt more true today.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a theoretical debate in Washington; it is a serious challenge lawmakers are struggling to address. The SAFE Innovation Framework, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2023, was the last  attempt to set standards for AI regulation. Since then, AI has rapidly integrated into American life, yet Congress has taken no steps to keep pace.

As technology reshapes how people live and work, we can recall the last Industrial Revolution and the lessons society learned in adapting to mechanization.

When factories spread across New England in the mid-1800s, people feared not just the noise of the machines, but the loss of their livelihoods. Laborers’ hard work was replaced by assembly lines, and machines drove farm workers out of the fields. Families saw the jobs that had given them stability and pride become extinct.

Both Emerson and Henry David Thoreau recognized that when work no longer defined people’s place in society, their identity was called into question. They sought out a solution and created transcendentalism: a critique of a system that reduced people to producers.

Emerson cautioned that life’s value could not be measured by output and efficiency. That warning rings true today.

Artificial intelligence, like the steam engine before it, promises enormous efficiency boosts but takes away the sense of meaning derived from one’s profession. For millions of Americans, a job is more than a paycheck. It is how they define themselves and give back to the community.

If machines can exceed teachers, truckers and physicists, the result is not only an economic change but an existential one. In contrast to the machines of the 19th century, AI is capable of outperforming humans in language and reasoning — the very skills that distinguish humans from all other species. The challenge is whether humans can still shape meaning in a world where artificial intelligence will be the leading intelligence.

Right now, all eyes are on Congress. Lawmakers are asked to push companies to innovate responsibly and maintain America’s international influence, but the tougher question is not economic at all. It is what happens to people when their work no longer provides a sense of purpose.

This is where Emerson can offer insight. He saw industrialization as a threat not just to wages, but to purpose itself. He argued that meaning wasn’t found in how much we produce, but in how free, creative and true to ourselves we are. “Insist on yourself; never imitate,” he wrote in “Self-Reliance.”

For ages, our role as a species was unmistakable. As the planet’s most intelligent beings, we carried the burden of invention and progress. Now, as AI takes on that role, humanity’s objective will have to change. We need to find meaning in the areas machines cannot change: our creativity, our relationships and the everyday things that differentiate us as humans.

Encouraging creativity in education and strengthening the communities people rely on will be essential. This is not the first time this has been done. In the 1800s, Emerson asked workers not to let the factory define who they were. Instead, he encouraged people to shift their values inward to emotion and imagination.

As demonstrated through the Industrial Revolution, AI might mean not just unemployment, but the loss of purpose one achieves from their work.

Farmers find meaning in their harvest, workers in their craft and teachers in educating the future generations. Artificial intelligence puts these at risk, and lawmakers have to ensure that human dignity survives in a world where technology competes in the workforce.

Emerson never lost hope. He reminded us that jobs and machines are not what make life meaningful. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself,” he wrote.

When factories replaced jobs, people had to ask what gave life meaning beyond work. This very question will now be asked again as AI begins to change our lives. For Congress, the real task is not only to keep America a leading innovator, but to ensure humans endure in the age of AI.