Thoughts on AI and Jobs

Article voiceover0:00-3:02Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.Humans > Jobs I have sympathy for people worried about losing their livelihoods. But at the same time I struggle to sympathise with the idea that jobs themselves are something sacred we should be fighting for.

I've always found it odd how much of our lives is devoted to jobs. A job is simply a means of survival. Jobs are inherently undemocratic, often soul-crushing, and yet we can't seem to imagine life without them. Chomsky once pointed out the irony: Western societies pride themselves on democracy and point fingers at nations deemed undemocratic, yet are completely at peace with their own populations spending the vast majority of their productive hours inside top-down organisations, doing work handed down from above.

I don't want humans to suffer because of AI, but to assume that the institution of employment is the best we have going for us, and the thing we should all be striving to protect, is bizarre to me. Any technology that reduces the need for jobs should be celebrated, in my view.