Bravo.  I'm really glad you're writing on this theme.  Where I've been stuck lately in thinking about the future is trying to figure out what is the best we can coherently hope for.  Which, as your story notes, seems like it involves tradeoffs between remaining human and having meaningful autonomy.

We’ve got the [molecular?] problem

I think he was saying "Moloch", as in the problem of avoiding a tragedy of the commons.