In the age of artificial intelligence, humans should accept the automation of meaningless work, share the uniquely human jobs which remain, and prepare for the worthy use of our newfound time.
Lately, there has been a lot of grim reporting on smaller workforces, layoffs, and job loss. In short: AI is here, and if your job can be automated, you should look elsewhere for work or prepare to be unemployed.
From a narrow, short-term point of view, this news can be disconcerting. For most Americans, much of our identity and existence is deeply intertwined with our job, with little time for much else. Most of us live to work rather than work to live.
Yet for those with a broader understanding of world history, perhaps this is what we’ve all been waiting for: a technological innovation with the real potential to force universal, full-time, full-employment to recede while allowing a more classic goal of human progress – leisure – to reemerge as the true enabler of our individual and collective pursuit of happiness.
We’ve seen this before. The last time this occurred on a grand scale – rapid technological innovation and automation resulting in massive job displacement– a swath of the population was ready, as they’d been anticipating its arrival for nearly a century. The innovation and automation were from the Market and Industrial Revolutions, whereas the readiness stemmed from the collective philosophy of Higher Progress, a movement which argued that the reduction of work hours was not only a natural and inevitable outcome of human progress, but also a necessary one for the pursuit of humanity’s purest form of freedom, freedom from necessity, which can only be found in the classic definition of leisure.
What do we do, where do we go, and how do we use our time once our duties and responsibilities are met, or when many of those duties and responsibilities can be handled by machines? What activities and states of being lay beyond social responsibilities and material necessity and are simply worthwhile in and for themselves?[1]
As the 20th century economist John Maynard Keynes stated clearly in his “Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren”,
Thus for the first time since his creation Man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
Yet as described in the last post, the immense fear and uncertainty of the Great Depression caused us to postpone our reckoning with this “permanent problem” and choose instead to pursue perpetual economic growth, “Full-Time Full-Employment”, and a forever expanding standard of living. To deal with overproduction and unemployment, the government ventured down the slippery slope of job creation and stimulus spending, serving as the nation’s employer of last resort when the private sector couldn’t create enough jobs through the natural laws of supply and demand. And in doing so, it effectively redefined leisure – free time, arguably our most prized possession – “as lost wealth in subsequent measurements of gross national product and then gross domestic product.”[2]
In looking at these headlines again, with this missed opportunity in mind, we should think hard about how to interpret what is occurring. Are these newly gained efficiencies resulting in a negative, as seen through the lens of 20th century definitions of lost wealth and irreversible unemployment? Or are we observing an unprecedented entry into an era of classic abundance, traditionally defined by economists as the moment when individuals choose to work less and “buy time” instead of material goods and services, or when we can afford additional leisure relative to the need or desire for additional spending?[3]
As hard-working Americans, our default, gut-reaction is the former. Despite the unquestionable examples of leisure’s positive influence on human civilization and the immense contributions to humanity achieved by prior leisure classes, leisure as a concept is clearly tainted, smeared, and sullied due to the elevation of work to a religious, moral, and patriotic gift (and duty) following the Great Depression, and the oppressive means through which time for leisure was acquired by elite aristocrats at certain points in history.
Furthermore, skeptics have raised valid concerns about the average American’s readiness for this newfound time. Since the creation of the television, business leaders and politicians have pointed to our addiction to passive, “mass leisure” and meaningless “commercial entertainment” as evidence that most humans are fundamentally incapable of the noble use of free time when given the opportunity. The continued development and success of passive pleasures – smartphones, streaming services, social media, gaming – are evidence of the insatiable demand for wasted time, at least from the classic perspective of time “well spent”. To these skeptics, it is new, worthwhile work that we are longing for as humans, not increasing leisure or idleness.
But history doesn’t have to repeat itself, nor even rhyme. It is historically unlikely that another opportunity will come in our lifetime with the same potential to fundamentally alter our relationship with time, work and leisure. And this is arguably the first time in which the “the everyday practice of what had previously been the preserve of the few” could be within reach of the majority of the population rather than just an aristocratic or oppressive elite.
To truly embrace the benefits of machine learning, we should to accept the automation of meaningless work, share the uniquely human jobs which remain, and proactively prepare – through education – for the noble use of our newfound time. The next few posts will discuss each of these opinions.