RabidHexley t1_jaemcgf wrote on February 28, 2023 at 9:49 PM

Reply to comment by V_Shtrum in Is style the next revolution? by nitebear

People still act & work in the absence of a need to work as well, in the current world (i.e. people who can afford to retire early). People also take on additional tasks, hobbies, and trades in their lives that have no practical benefit.

Gardening, musical instruments, hiking, fan fiction, all manner of crafts. Most hobbies can take a lot of work and don't have a practical return. An AI (or a supermarket, amazon, midi software, etc.) being able to do something for you doesn't replace the desire to do and experience things yourself.

Many people's actual jobs already don't serve any practical function outside of the narrow scope of something like a corporate structure. Middle manager, bureaucrat, many accounting roles, and all of the people serving in support positions for these roles. Completely divorced from any fruit of labor besides a paycheck.

V_Shtrum t1_jaep48h wrote on February 28, 2023 at 10:07 PM

All of what you say is true, the circle I'm trying to square is that, on the one hand, people often find work dull and unfulfilling etc. On the other, it's been widely observed that unemployment and underemployment correlate with all sorts of negative outcomes such as crime, poor mental and physical health etc. I'm not sold on the idea that more generous unemployment benefits (AKA UBI) alone are going to solve that*

I was convinced by Victor Frankl's book 'Man's Search For Meaning' that (most) people aren't at their core hedonistic, what they really want is meaning in their lives. Many people get this from work, others from having a family (and so on). I think that if AI were to eliminate work, it would eliminate a lot of the meaning that a lot of people get in their lives, and something needs to replace that. If nothing positive fills that vacuum, then something negative will.

EDIT:

I would also add, as you intimate, that the death of meaningful work predates AI, and that the gross dissatisfaction that many people feel at work (and in their lives) is a consequence of this. I don't know what the solution is.

*There will of course be a subsection of people who will be perfectly happy on UBI.

RabidHexley t1_jaf0j2e wrote on February 28, 2023 at 11:27 PM

I feel like a lot of the malaise that comes from unemployment/underemployment are due to employment being the standard structure of society. The constant fear and anxiety of failure and poverty hanging over your head while you ponder how you actually want to live your life. Without employment you're not a functioning member of society, our cities are entirely built around there being places to work.

There would certainly be a transition, we and everyone else currently alive are born into this world. Accepting change is always difficult. But I don't see why society wouldn't be able structure itself around different systems. Clubs, associations, societies, performance, athletics, childcare (we're not gonna have robots overseeing kindergarteners), education (people still want to learn things that are already known), friends, family. Hell, join a farmstead.

Structures and systems that could replace obligatory employment have already been conceived. They're just limited by the need to function within a capitalist system. They're marginal to employment because almost everyone requires employment to function within society.

There'd probably be a meteoric rise in virtuosos and elite athletes in less financially rewarding sports given there'd be no fear of failure and poverty preventing talented people from pursuing their chosen craft to the utmost. Doesn't matter what AI or a computer can do, we'd still want to push human capabilities to the limit. And there'd still be prestige associated with such pursuits. (People still care about Chess and Go in a post Deep Blue and AlphaGo world)

The generation leading into this world would certainly have its members who struggle without the societal structure of employment. A UBI/welfare-based society would encounter challenges since we'd still be talking about a world based around economic (un)employment.

But I can't imagine the people born into and growing up in a truly post-employment world would view ours - riddled with poverty and people performing tedious busywork such as it is - with anything but horror.

Along with all of the intangible benefits that come from children no longer starving, people no longer living in eternal debt and eliminating the crime and instability that comes with systemic, generational poverty.