A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond
AI agents, monitored by humans, could potentially drastically reduce the need for human work while expanding the economy. The adjustment to this shift, if it were to occur, is hard to imagine. It will require a major rethinking of how we approach work and society. Shortened workweeks, universal basic income, and other policy changes might become a
... See moreEthan Mollick • Co-Intelligence
That loss of meaning and purpose has very real and serious consequences. Rates of depression triple among those unemployed for six months, and people looking for work are twice as likely to commit suicide as the gainfully employed. Alcohol abuse and opioid overdoses both rise alongside unemployment rates, with some scholars attributing rising morta
... See moreKai-Fu Lee • AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
amazon.com
One AI expert put it to me this way: if you could write a user’s manual for your job, give it to someone else, and that person could learn to do your job as well as you in a month or less, you’re probably going to be replaced by a machine.
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
But there’s a deeper, unasked question that lingers in the background, one introduced by the unconventional thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti in the early 1980s: “If the machine can take over everything man can do, and do it still better than us, then what is a human being, what are you?”