The “AI Will Take Our Jobs” Panic

Designing a Human Life in a World That Needs Less Human Labor

Many people nowadays worry about the danger that Artificial Intelligence will render much of human work unnecessary.

It’s not at all clear how valid that concern is—how much human labor AI will actually displace. But let’s look at this “problem” as though the concern proves justified, and imagine an economy that could produce an abundance of what people want without needing much human labor.

Terrible news, it’s assumed, because people who are “unemployed” will live unhappy, empty lives.

But imagine what the peasants, serfs and slaves of earlier times would think of such a situation: would they think it a “nightmare” to have a society that can produce an abundance of what people want while the people are freed from the need to sweat and strain to meet their survival needs?

But imagine what the peasants, serfs and slaves of earlier times would think of such a situation: would they think it a “nightmare” to have a society that can produce an abundance of what people want while the people are freed from the need to sweat and strain to meet their survival needs?

On the contrary, they’d see it as wish-fulfillment of the kind we sometimes encounter in the old fairy tales.

And they’d be right: Human society could use AI super-competence to give people a major opportunity: to design a good life.

The Societal Challenge: Distributing the Fruits of a Productive Economy

It is our culture’s assumption that a meaningful life requires making a living that makes “unemployment” a curse.

But there is an important prerequisite for turning the disappearance of much human work into an opportunity rather than a curse: the abundance produced by an AI economy would have to be distributed in a way that provided for people’s economic needs.

That would require a major change in how our society works. Our present economic system distributes most of its goods by giving people money in exchange for their work, which they then use to buy what they need and want. If AI makes a great deal of human labor unnecessary, that system no longer works: people cannot be required to earn their claim on society’s abundance by doing work that society no longer needs them to do.

So an AI economy would have to find some other way to distribute enough of the abundance it creates to provide for people’s economic needs. If we accomplished that, people would have something previously available mainly to the children of the super-rich: a guaranteed “living” that frees them from having to organize their lives around making one.

The Individual Challenge: Designing a Life that is Fulfilling

The generations of people born into great wealth have known that they will never need to “make a living.” That gives them the freedom to design and execute the lives they want to live.

True, not all have handled that freedom successfully.

But the important thing is that some people — freed of the need to “make a living” — do design and execute good lives. They’ve cultivated their gifts. They’ve found ways to contribute to the world.

Utilizing that freedom is itself a kind of art. Or a spiritual skill. One must be able to tune inward to discover what confers feelings of meaningfulness, and find the paths that lead there. One must explore what leads to feelings of living well.

A challenge, but — proven by those who have done it — not beyond our potential as humans.

So a second challenge for society — if AI does greatly reduce the need for human labor — will be to raise its children to have whatever it is that enables those successful rich kids to live lives well-lived.

As people cease to earn their keep by being components in a productive machine, the society’s families and educational institutions will need to understand more deeply the human potential for living well, and how to develop it: to discover, nourish and express their gifts. To tune in on their truth and live it. To envision a goal and a path to achieve it.

To design and build a life that’s rewarding.