Why We Want Robots at Work but Humans in Art

We hate other people when latency becomes intolerable. As soon as a task is about speed, other humans feel like an irritating inconvenience. The Uber driver’s small talk annoys us. We wish we were in a Waymo. The cashier’s tip screen feels like a micro-ransom when all we want is a bottle of water. Elevator operators, switchboard attendants, bank tellers; casualties of our impatience, gone without eulogy. In the economy of necessity, humans are friction, and friction is waste.

But when the stopwatch stops, we flip. We crave other people. Leisure is a hall of mirrors, and only another mortal can polish the glass. A robot could throw perfect strikes forever, but no one would pay to watch. We want the thrill of potential failure. The human tremor that turns repetition into story. Stockfish calculates deeper than Magnus Carlsen, but Carlsen’s fallibility turns calculation into drama. Drama is the premium we pay to feel implicated.

The same rule governs fine dining. Automation could replicate every Michelin-starred dish, but no one would fly across oceans for it. We travel for the scarred forearm that stirred the sauce, for the childhood orchard hidden in the garnish, for the chef’s cameo at the table sealing the story with eye contact. Yet when we order takeout, we tell the driver to leave it at the door just to avoid interaction.

Art lays the principle bare. AI can fill museums' worth of art overnight, and for that very reason, it's worthless. The collector doesn’t want perfection. They want a fragment of human myth. Proof that intention once flared there, that someone took a risk. “My kid could do that.” Your kid didn’t, and no one cares.

This split, misanthropy in utility, narcissism in leisure, is the blueprint of automation. Wherever output is graded by speed, accuracy, or cost, silicon will inherit the earth and we will welcome new overlords. Wherever value depends on provenance, uncertainty, and social risk, humans are irreplaceable. The algorithm may mix the paint or ghostwrite the score, but a breathing protagonist must still step forward so the audience can idolize a hero.

The elegance of the future is not in man versus machine but in their division of labor: silicon sanding the rough edges of necessity so carbon can ascend to meaning. We will abolish baristas and canonize chefs, silence agents and encore actors. It is the same selfish instinct in both arenas—purge friction, preserve narrative—driving a world where the driest chores are done by circuits and the juiciest stories are told by people who bleed.