Because it takes time and effort away from questions that can create more value for all.

Because jobs are a mean to an end, and not a goal per se.

Because, on a societal level, they are a means to increase the size of society’s pie, and that the problem is actually about how to share the bigger pie.

Because on an individual perspective jobs are neither the exclusive nor optimal paths to our needs, and we can and should strive for better answers for our own sake.

Because a question can box the possibilities of answers, and to find the best answer we can, we need to think carefully about the question asked.

“AI will steal our jobs” has become an overused statement in the world media nowadays. It reveals an underlying fear among the societies above a certain income threshold (level 4 societies). The natural question is “How can we keep jobs for humans?”. I strongly believe that this legitimate question is taking a very short-term approach and worse, is preventing any further reflection. Do you actually want to keep your job? Why? Keeping a job is not an end goal, it is always a means to an end. The ends matter to us, they are our objectives and it is important to not confuse the path with the destination. Our goals can consist of being happy, accomplished, exploring the stars, having kids and so on. Our goals are the things we should strive for.

This article will attempt to answer the questions “Why do we want to keep your jobs?” and consequently “Should we try to keep our jobs?”. If the answer ends up being negative, then it is better to transform the question from “How do humans keep their jobs?” to “How can we design a better world for humans where AI help us, notably by taking care of the conventional jobs”.

Jobs: Society perspective

Let’s define the total value enjoyed by society as a pie, that can be represented as the total well-being divided (not always fairly) between the individuals composing the society. Before History, when humans were living in very small families, the value an individual received was pretty much what each person could deliver to themselves. With more complex societies (5000BC), came the opportunity for efficiencies, specialization and organization, that made the pie bigger, and gave birth to art, philosophy, science and societal wealth. Technology developed and increased the total societal value at a steady rhythm. This rhythm became exponential with the industrial revolution, and has kept accelerating with computerization.

Now that we have the opportunity to increase the pie even more with advanced AI and to have more wealth and free time in the societal pie, why would we stop this? We should have started a long time ago, as Bertrand Russel explained. Russel criticized the idea that work is virtuous and an end in itself, and claimed that leisure is a value add. In one of his examples, he describes a scenario in which before the industrial revolution we had two farmers working eight hours a day in a field. Then came machines that halved the work needed for the same production. Instead of making both farmers work four hours a day, society decided to fire one. One farmer ended up financially wealthy but time poor and the other unemployed and distressed. It’s not too late to rethink this approach.

The main concern about automation of work is the redistribution of the generated value. Not that the pie would get smaller, or that the individual share would, but that the future cuts would be more “unfair” than now (fairness is arguably one of the 5 pillars of human ethics). So, if we have the opportunity to have a bigger pie, and fear that some might take too much, shouldn’t we ask “How to share the increased value ethically?” rather than “How to preserve the pie as it is?”.

Jobs: Individual perspective

Jobs, as means, are delivering a series of benefits to us as individuals. We will separate them into six categories, which can relate to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

Money: A job can fulfill our survival needs, such as roof, food, and physical wants, (aka Maslow physiological and safety layers).

Social: A job satisfies our social desire by making us part of a tribe, aka the company, and a group inside of it (the team). (Maslow layer 3)

Identity: A job can give us a definition of who we are. How many people call themselves per their job, declaring: “I am a …” instead of “I work as a …”. It allows people to boost their esteem, earning internal and external respect and status for what they are practicing. (Maslow layer 4)

Self actualization: For the top layer, jobs do not fare well. They do not allow most of the population to leverage their proficiency at best : 72% of US worker don’t feel self actualized from their work. An answer that works only for a quarter of the population is not a good answer. Nevertheless, jobs still provide in two other categories.

Meaning: By doing a job, an individual is fundamentally giving value to society, enough for society to exchange that value for a certain amount of money (the tool for value transferring). Therefore, by doing his job, a person is in most cases useful, and can feel that way. What they do matters, at least for some people. It gives purpose to the individual.

And management: a job can give structures, goals, timelines, controls and also a box, a career, a path. It restricts the field of possibilities and restrains freedom. It prevents paralysis by choices. Having the freedom to wake up every morning and being able to choose anything can be terrifying. Having a job prevents too deep or too intense questioning about what to do with life, and gives an answer for the next 40 years to a young adult.

So with all those positive points, why shouldn’t we fight to keep the jobs then? The concern over their loss seems legitimate.

It is legitimate, because we have recently been enjoying all those points, but they don’t come for free, nor are they free of drawbacks.

Why jobs aren’t perfect

Jobs provided and still can provide some answers and benefits but our system and society is far from optimal. Let’s demonstrate why the current situation is not perfect, and how these needs could otherwise be met.

Money: Luck, or at the very least factors outside of the individual control (societal trends, market demands, and valuation), profoundly affects ones level of wealth. Having a passion for the “wrong” field could force to choose between financial wealth or work satisfaction. People who have a bad draw because of personal or societal reasons (restructuring, industry shift, automation) can end up unemployed for 1, 5, 20 years with massive impact on their well being and that of their relatives. Some jobs barely give enough, and don’t leave enough time or energy for employees to enjoy life.

There are other ways to redistribute financial wealth. Going from AI taxation to Universal Basic Income, we have leads on better and fairer systems for our society.

Social: First of all, this aspect is the easiest to find outside of the job. E.g. you can have friends, be part of a family, a town, a country. Humans are so fundamentally gregarious that there are heaps of groups we can integrate into. Secondly, how good can a social circle be when you didn’t choose it? Work can sometimes create deep relationships, but your colleagues are rarely your best friends.

Identity, Meaning and Management: By putting so much emphasis in our society and culture on how much a job delivers on those aspects, and by making it so crucially fundamental, we have opened the door to a series of backlashes. The most painful is the cultural norm that “success in life fundamentally means having a so called “good” job, and to a lesser extent, have its associated rewards”. E.g. A moderately wealthy, time poor, neurosurgeon with a family in shambles might be described as successful more often than a wealthy, happy and balanced volunteer social worker/artist/unemployed. The social pressure is immense and the impact very real (e.g. the powerlessness and depression experienced by the unemployed). There are many paths to existential realization, and a job is just one of them. Being freed from work as we know it, we would have a considerable amount of time that we could dedicate to a search for an answer to the meaning of life. Jobs, by keeping us “busy” often prevent us from even asking the question. Jobs are the equivalent of duct tape on a hole, or blinders around our eyes, they make us forget about the problem for a little while, but they don’t solve it well enough.

To summarize, jobs gave us benefits on the five layers of our goals/needs, but they didn’t deliver those fully, fairly and perfectly to the whole of society, and they are not the only way to achieve them.

Conclusion

The next step in the reasoning, assuming we have a choice, is to ask: do we want to keep our jobs and our current socioeconomic system? Or do we want to look for a better one, now that we have better tools at our disposal?

It is clear that in our current system AI could cause some damage in the near future if nothing is done. This is why it is more than ever the time to lift our heads and see the bigger picture. How can we leverage what we have to bring a new model which will increase the overall and individual well being? Do we have an answer now? No. Do we have leads? Yes.

So once again, what is the question you want to ask: “How do humans keep their jobs?” Or “How do we make a functional society without them?” What is the problem you want to work on? What is the world you want to live in? A world of fear? Fear to be the next in line to be “replaced”, desperately climbing over feeble rocks and the bodies of others until the unavoidable fall to the bottom? Or a world of hope? Hope to see a better society and a better species on its way to social, economic and wealth maturity?

So next time you have the opportunity to ask a question and raise a debate, please ponder what is it you truly want. How to keep your job from A.I’s, or how to leverage A.I.’s so that we are all better off?

Acknowledgments

Special Thanks to Maciek, Nada, and Daniel for their feedback and criticism