CONCEPT
B-Values
Maslow's catalogue of Being-values — truth, beauty, wholeness, justice, aliveness, and the rest — the intrinsic criteria by which the self-actualizing person evaluates her work and which no algorithm can supply.
The B-values are Maslow's list of the qualities that self-actualizing people pursue as intrinsically worthwhile: truth, beauty, wholeness, aliveness, uniqueness, perfection, necessity, completion, justice, order, simplicity, richness, effortlessness, playfulness, self-sufficiency. They are not instrumental; they are not pursued for the sake of something else. The person at the level of Being-motivation finds these values compelling on their own terms. The book's argument is that the B-values are precisely what AI cannot supply and therefore precisely what must be brought to the collaboration by the human. The amplifier amplifies; the values come from the person — or they do not come at all.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Maslow derived the B-values empirically, by asking self-actualizing people what they found intrinsically compelling about their work and lives. The answers clustered. Truth-seeking was reported as a value in itself, not a means to accurate prediction. Beauty was pursued for its own sake, not for its utility. Justice was pursued because injustice felt wrong in the