Toward a new work paradigm in an age of AI
Rethinking the Fear of Job Loss: How AI and Automation Can Unlock a New Work-Leisure Paradigm
By Will Green May 5, 2023
In recent weeks Goldman Sachs has been making headlines with the prospect of 300mn jobs on the line due to the rapid acceleration of AI technology and the replacement of many white collar jobs by its hands.
But it’s not the first time headlines have been made due to the advent of new technologies. This is a repeating historical narrative. From electrification to the horse to cart transition, computers back in the 60s or the internet more recently. Time and again we have feared the loss of jobs only for the opposite to happen. “There has been a steady march of new jobs that technology has been creating since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution” economist David Autor argues in his TED talk.
The concern is that this time the speed of transition is far higher than anything previously seen. 300m seems to be a low ball on potential estimates. McKinsey already put the figure at 375 million who’s jobs could be lost by 2030, others say up to 1 billion could be affected.
Isn’t the whole idea of technological progress to eventually free us from work? To create a Utopia?
But whilst there may be 100 reasons to be fearful of the impending technological arms race - notably with the prospect that our AI assistants might accidentally wipe out humanity if their programming is not aligned with the undefinable parameters of ensuring human flourishing - haven’t we got the fear of job loss backwards? Isn’t the whole idea of technological progress to eventually free us from work? To create a Utopia?
We’re so caught up in the paradigm of work-survival thinking that we fail to recognise the opportunity that lies ahead.
What does work-survival mean? In the current paradigm we are born and must work for our right to live. We have no birthright to access the goods we need to survive and thrive. In the predominant social Darwinian view of the world more recently expounded by selfish gene deterministic theory our fight for existence is ordained by nature. However evidence from the social sciences, neuroscience, biology, epigenetics and other fields increasingly suggest that this view is lopsided at best if not downright wrong. The emerging view is that humans are innately pro social, caring, empathic, compassionate and our capacity for love stretches into an intrinsic desire for creativity and mutualism - ideas interestingly that Darwin himself supported (see Descent of man; love and mutualism are mentioned over 90 times vs selfishness about 10 and in a negative context). Systems scientist Riane Eisler documents extensive evidence in her book Nurturing Our Humanity noting “rather than being hardwired for ruthless selfishness and violence, humans have also evolved powerful capacities, and indeed proclivities, for empathy, equity, helping, caring, and various other prosocial acts."
Why does this matter?
It matters because in the current paradigm, survival is assumed as the sole motivator to get us to work and participate in society. If we lose that motivation we will become lazy “free riders”, as social theorist Mancur Olson warned 60 years ago in the logic of collective action. Jobs are not just a means to an end they are the substrate that keeps society functioning, lose that and anarchy will ensue.