A World Without Work?

But this will be a good thing.  Musk says that in 10 or 20 years, all human work will be unnecessary.  He told an investment forum: “My prediction is that work will be optional.”

Sure, you can work if you want to, as a hobby:

It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” Musk said. “If you want to work, [it’s] the same way you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard. It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, and some people still do it because they like growing vegetables.”

But no one will need to work.  With machines taking over all human labor, he said, we will enjoy a time of “amazing abundance.”  “With the continued growth of AI and robotics,” he said, “we actually are headed to a future of universal high income.”  Without working for it!  “There would be no shortage of goods or services.”

How would that work, having access to unlimited goods and services without working?  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been advocating that the government pay everyone a universal income.  Way back in 2016, six years before the launch of ChatGPT, he wrote, “I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.”  With no one having to work, we would all be wards of the state.  We would all be on welfare, with no taxpayers to support us.  Yet abundance would be so amazing, thanks to our AI masterminds and robotic servants, we could have whatever we want.

Actually, though, as Musk is realizing, “My guess is, if you go out long enough—assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely—money will stop being relevant.” Everyone will just be able to take whatever they want for free.  But the left’s dream of economic equality would become a reality.

Indeed, the classic definition of the economy has to do with the allocation of limited resources to meet unlimited wants and needs. But if the resources are no longer limited, the economy would cease to exist.  Marx looked forward to the withering away of the state; Musk is looking forward to the withering away of the economy.

But in this techno-utopia, what would human beings do?  Just sit around?  Read AI-generated books, listen to AI-generated music, and watch AI-generated TV?  What would be the pleasure in that?  How could we handle the boredom?

Without work, what would happen to our creativity, initiative, drive, achievement, and other qualities that have always marked human beings at our best?  What would be left of us?

At another forum, Musk said this, repeating his vision of life without work, but then recognizing a problem with this:

“In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job,” Musk said. “There will be universal high income – and not universal basic income – universal high income. There’ll be no shortage of goods or services.”. . .

“The question will really be one of meaning,” he said. “If a computer can do, and the robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning? That really will be the question in that benign scenario.”

To be sure, our lives have meaning apart from how well we do at our work.  That is no doubt how Musk finds meaning in his life, but this is a poignant admission.  Ironic, too, all this talk of eliminating work and money coming from the richest man on the planet.  But he’s right that a life without work would take away our sense of purpose.  And, I would add, our sense of satisfaction.

Now I don’t think these predictions will come true.  In addition to a host of practical problems–who will set up the AI networks?  who will supervise the robots?  who will engineer the necessary infrastructure for all of this?–there are more basic human issues.  Human beings want to work and need to work.  We are glad to work with technology as long as it is a tool, not something that makes our lives worse.

Above all, our technology is not going to eliminate human labor because God has designed us to work.  He has not changed His created order:  “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).  And He has not lifted His curse:  “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Genesis 3:19).  And He has not changed His provision for us:  “So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work”  (Ecclesiastes 3:22).

Nor has He changed His way of working through human beings to care for those whom He has created.  That is, to say, He has not cancelled the doctrine of vocation.  He still wants us to love and serve our neighbors through our work, what we do for them.  He will continue to call human beings to marriage, parenthood, and the other vocations in the estate of the family.  He will continue to make us interdependent on each other by giving us vocations in the economic order.  He will continue to hold society together by calling us to citizenship and government in the estate of the state.  And He will continue to call pastors and laypeople in the estate of the church.

This is how God has chosen to operate in His temporal realm.  Eternity will be different, in ways we cannot even comprehend.  “‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on,’” we are told.  “’Blessed indeed,’” says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!’” (Revelation 13:14).  There we will rest, and yet, our deeds will somehow follow us. This will be a rest of fulfillment, of contemplation, of relationships–all of which will be a function of what God has made of us in our lives on earth.  

Photo:  Bored People by Tima Miroshnichenko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bored-people-on-a-birthday-party-5804997/ via Pexels, Public Domain