“Don’t die,” says Bryan Johnson, “100 years is not enough.” But death is the only reason attention matters—and by extension, art.

Artificial intelligence can generate abundance in creation, it can even create new currencies, but it cannot convert attention into currency. Only human beings can do that.

The internet solved distribution for many types of creative work but it never solved monetization. Media was distributed at scale on ad-based platforms and streaming services, so in that sense it was monetized, but not in a way that meaningfully accrued to artists themselves.