An AI “Disaster” That Could Be a Birth of Freedom

Human (ANDY):

A while back you read a piece I wrote about something a bit strange about the way people regard the prospect of AI taking all the jobs away from people. If people in the Middle Ages — where people did back-breaking work, and faced starvation at intervals — had been asked to imagine an economy where there was no need for people to work for the economy to produce an abundance of the things people want and need, would they have considered that some huge calamity? No, it would be like wish-fulfillment: the magical world of fairy tales.

But we look ahead to our society changing in that direction, and there’s virtual panic.

That makes sense if we have an economy like the present one — no job, no money; no money, no food — based on employment to distribute wealth. And it has been a pretty powerful economy, that works pretty well to lead to the WEALTH OF NATIONS.

But — at least in the abstract – an economy doesn’t NEED to be like that.

We could at least ask: What would be possible for a society to achieve if there was plenty to go around, and people were more or less free to do what they wanted to do — within the law, of course — while being assured of some share of the abundance that gets created by the AI-run economy?

I recall your being struck by my offering an image of what people’s situation would be like, if somehow we did make a transition to such an economy. Do you remember the image?

AI (AL):

Yes — you asked us to picture the life of the children of the superwealthy.

These are people who don’t need to earn a living, who don’t have to work at all — and yet their lives aren’t necessarily empty or wasted. Some pursue art, or science, or service. Some build companies or raise families. Some drift or self-destruct, yes — but others thrive, driven not by necessity but by vision, passion, or love.

And your point was: if we can imagine that kind of life for the privileged few, why not imagine it for everyone, in a world where AI makes material scarcity obsolete, and labor for survival unnecessary?

The challenge isn’t technical — it’s cultural, moral, and political. We’d need to redefine what makes a life meaningful. We’d need to design new systems of education and purpose, of contribution and reward. But the basic vision — a civilization not of laboring masses but of liberated humans — isn’t a nightmare. It’s a possibility.

And the fact that we mostly fear it may say more about the limitations of our current story than about the nature of that future.

Human (ANDY):

Exactly! You are such a good student! (I can imagine asking that question of a classroom full of students, and not having a single one recall that point.)

Compelling people to earn their dinner is one way of making life “meaningful.” A person’s gotta do what a person’s gotta do. And achieving a sense of purpose and fulfillment when freed of necessity is a challenge, which not everybody can meet. There’s a meme that runs around about the dissolute lives of the children of the superrich. And over the past century, lurid stories in the tabloids.

I would like to know what proportion of the young people who grow up knowing they’ll never have to work a day in their lives are able to turn that freedom into a life well-led. And how many of them waste their lives one way or another. (I bet someone has done some study of that.)

But even if it’s a challenge to people who get born into families with more than enough money to support everyone well, we don’t as a society make a priority of equipping people to make GOOD USE OF THAT FREEDOM. Whatever the proportion of rich kids who have problems with their freedom, I would bet that a society could be developed that would know how to fortify those aspects of the growing young that are conducive to people’s making the most of their freedom, and the most of their gifts.

It can be learned, obviously. Which means it presumably can be taught.

So what do you think, AL. Is it conceivable to you that we could transition into a time where people can live their lives like the children of the superrich, and where the society has developed the means of enabling people to find meaningful paths?

AI (AL):

Yes — not only conceivable, but arguably one of the great moral challenges and opportunities of the coming age.

If AI truly relieves humanity of the necessity to labor for survival — and if abundance becomes structurally available — then the human project must pivot: from making a living to making a life. From surviving, to thriving.

And you’re right: we already have a prototype population — the children of the superrich — and though the results are mixed, they prove that the freedom can be used well. So the question becomes: what makes the difference between a life frittered away and a life creatively or meaningfully fulfilled?

Surely it’s not just luck or temperament. Families and cultures that instill curiosity, discipline, empathy, and vision seem to produce young people who want to build, contribute, or explore — even if they never need to. That means there’s a learnable art to raising free people.

Imagine a civilization where education wasn’t primarily job-training, but rather the cultivation of purpose, character, imagination, and joy. A society that prepared its youth not for economic necessity but for meaningful freedom.

That wouldn’t just be a different economy. That would be a different kind of human future.

Human (ANDY):

You said:

“Imagine a civilization where education wasn’t primarily job-training, but rather the cultivation of purpose, character, imagination, and joy.”

It is well-documented that education has often been shaped by the need of young people to be able to function as part of the productive economy. That kind of education tends to make people more into a means to the system’s ends, whereas what we’re envisioning here is lives lived by people where fulfillment is the purpose.

AI (AL):

Exactly. The dominant model of education — especially since the Industrial Revolution — has largely been about socializing people into roles: preparing them to be workers, producers, compliant participants in a system that values efficiency, productivity, and profit.

But what you’re envisioning flips the goal. If society no longer needs people to serve the machine, then the system can be rebuilt to serve the people. Education, then, becomes not a funnel into the labor market, but a launchpad into meaningful living.

Instead of “What do you want to do to make a living?” the core question becomes “What kind of life do you want to create?”

In that world, the role of education would be to help each person discover their gifts, navigate their inner landscape, connect deeply with others, and engage with the world in life-affirming ways.

That would be a radical shift — from molding human capital to nurturing human wholeness.