For a long time humanity has dreamed about a life free of toil, spent largely in leisure, learning and pleasure.<\/p>\n
Now that AI has arrived, what if it was the thing that finally delivers us into a post-work future?<\/p>\n
While there are many pressing concerns and disruptions thrown up by AI, I find it interesting that more of us aren\u2019t asking: if we no longer had to work, or needed to work as much, what would we do with all that free time?<\/p>\n
For the sake of a thought experiment, let\u2019s presume there will be some form of universal basic income in the wake of mass joblessness. (In the past 12 months, this has moved to a policy discussion<\/a>, at least in the UK.) And let\u2019s imagine that AI is run \u2013 as OpenAI was originally intended to \u2013 as a not-for-profit enterprise<\/a>.<\/p>\n If the issue of subsistence was able to be sorted, the big questions would be more philosophical, rather than economic.<\/p>\n What would we do with ourselves? How would we find meaning? Fill time? Not go insane from the lack of structure? With God dead, the nuclear family in decline, and the need to work removed \u2013 what would hold us together?<\/p>\n Thinkers from the past have grappled with this idea of time abundance.<\/p>\n In ancient Greece, Epicurus and a close group of friends spent their days learning and debating philosophy. They strove to be content with the basics, so as not to live in anxiety about scarcity (though it should be noted this idyll didn\u2019t occur without labour \u2013 Epicurus had a slave Mys, among others, who managed the house and garden).<\/p>\n Thomas More\u2019s 1516 book Utopia depicts an imaginary island society governed by reason, communal property, universal labour and no money.<\/p>\n Karl Marx, in a section of his early notebooks, Grundrisse, argued that the transition to a post-capitalist society combined with advances in automation would allow for significant reductions in labour needed to produce necessary goods. In this post-scarcity age, people would have significant amounts of leisure time to pursue science, the arts and creativity.<\/p>\n (In Capital, Marx later abandoned this view, believing that capitalism could continually renew itself unless overthrown.)<\/p>\n In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that in 100 years people would barely need to work, as their basic needs would be met thanks to technological advances. Photograph: Hulton Getty<\/p>\n In economist John Maynard Keynes\u2019 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, he predicted in 100 years\u2019 time there would be such abundance that people would barely need to work, as their basic needs would be taken care of thanks to technological advances. Only four more years to go!<\/p>\n And the hippies of the 1960s \u201ctuned in and dropped out\u201d \u2013 experimenting with psychedelics, commune living and eastern religions, with the aim of flourishing in the way that Epicureans were also trying to flourish, outside the bounds of work and family.<\/p>\n There was an optimism to these experiments, with the common goal being a world where we didn\u2019t have to work, allowing for a collective flourishing and creativity.<\/p>\n Yet somehow humanity has found itself increasingly working more, not less \u2013 as a result of our phones making us always on \u2013 with the ancient goals of flourishing slipping further out of reach.<\/p>\n Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel prize-winning physicist known as the godfather of AI, predicted in 2025<\/a> that AI would \u201creplace everybody\u201d doing mundane intellectual labour. In a more recent interview<\/a> he said: \u201cIf you make lots and lots of people unemployed, even if they get universal basic income, they\u2019re not going to be happy. Because they need purpose \u2026 they need to feel they\u2019re contributing something.\u201d<\/p>\n Diary of a CEO host Steve Bartlett, in another conversation with computer scientist Stuart Russell<\/a>, envisioned a post-scarcity society that is focused on entertainment, which was why a number of tech entrepreneurs were looking to buy sports teams.<\/p>\n