\u201cThe task ahead is not to escape work but to reclaim its dignity,\u201d she concludes, \u201cso that we remain capable of realizing the meaning and joy that no technology can create.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nSome people are claiming that the impact on work of the impending AI revolution will be a good thing.\u00a0 In their telling, AI will free us from the drudgery that constitutes much of our work today, enabling us to spend our time with the more fulfilling parts of work, such as creativity and human relationships.<\/p>\n
The conservative social scientist Arthur Brooks makes that argument in his Free Press<\/em> column entitled It\u2019s 2028:\u00a0 AI Has Made Your Life Much Happier<\/a>.\u00a0 Presented as an answer to the Citrini memo that was all doom and gloom about how AI would destroy so many jobs by 2028 that it would bring down the whole economy (we blogged about that here<\/a>), Brooks says that unlike some other technology, AI will give us happier, more meaningful lives.<\/p>\n He begins by distinguishing between \u201ccomplex\u201d problems, such those of relationships, love, meaning, faith, suffering, and the other big concerns of human life, and \u201ccomplicated\u201d problems, the practical side of human life that can be solved by effort, cognition, and technology.<\/p>\n Our work usually involves both:\u00a0 elements of \u201ccomplex\u201d problems (such as the hows and whys, the relationships with colleagues and customers, the creative dimension of our labors) and the \u201ccomplicated\u201d problems (such as writing reports and e-mails, configuring equipment, logistical planning, the physical parts of our job).<\/p>\n Brooks says that AI will take over the \u201ccomplicated\u201d parts of our work\u2013all of the tedium and \u201cbusy work\u201d\u2013allowing us to devote ourselves completely to the \u201ccomplex\u201d parts of our work, leading us all to a greater level of satisfaction and sense of meaning.\u00a0 Brooks says,<\/p>\n AI is different from every other complicated problem to date, and here\u2019s why: It has freed us from a huge amount of our most tedious, quotidian complicated problems\u2014for example, what we need to do to support our families, but certainly wouldn\u2019t do if we didn\u2019t have to. This included nearly every routine intellectual or physical task, all types of data work, endless email correspondence, and\u2014thanks be to God<\/em>\u2014the vast majority of meetings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thus, by 2028, just two years from today, according to Brook\u2019s \u201cthought experiment,\u201d \u201ca new day began to dawn for human flourishing\u201d:<\/p>\n Life\u2019s tiresome, complicated problems no longer had to occupy such a large part of people\u2019s lives. And not just the awful meetings and tedious emails from their old jobs, but also the headaches of personal finance and logistics of family life. Even many big worries receded, as policy-oriented AI mostly stabilized the macroeconomy, making markets blessedly boring.<\/p>\n Today, in 2028, most people affected have realized that they can let technology take care of life\u2019s complicated problems while they fill their abundant time in the complex spaces of life\u2019s deep meaning: falling in love, exploring philosophy and religious faith, appreciating beauty of all types, even coming to understand the nature of their own natural suffering. A new kind of life entrepreneurship has begun to dawn: Real-life friendships flourish, people are having more babies than they did in decades, colleges overflow with philosophy and the humanities, houses of worship are bursting at the seams, and an appreciation of art and nature is growing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n First of all, as Brooks himself says, \u201cA classic error is to seek a complicated solution to a complex problem\u2014which makes the problem worse.\u201d\u00a0 This is what happened with social media, he says, a \u201ccomplicated\u201d technological solution designed to solve the \u201ccomplex\u201d problem of loneliness by enhancing human connections.\u00a0 Instead, social media became \u201ca substitute<\/em> for in-person relationships and wound up [making its users] feeling lonelier and more isolated.\u201d\u00a0 He admits that some people are using AI to do the same thing, but for reasons he doesn\u2019t really explain he believes that people will stop doing that.\u00a0 But will they? Won\u2019t technology that emulates the human mind and human communication make this problem worse?<\/p>\n But set that aside for now.\u00a0 Catholic sociologist Anne Hendershott answers Brook\u2019s thesis by arguing that the very parts of work that Brooks dismisses as drudgery and tedious are where the dignity of labor is to be found.\u00a0 She has written an article for the Catholic Thing<\/em> entitled The Dignity of Work in Catholic Social Thought<\/a>.\u00a0 What she says, I think, can also apply in a Lutheran understanding of work and in Christian social thought more broadly:<\/p>\n Brooks imagines a future in which artificial intelligence frees us from what he calls the \u201ccomplicated\u201d tasks of life.\u00a0 In fact, Brooks treats routine intellectual labor as if it were merely a nuisance \u2013 email, drafting, data work, repetitive problem sets, the slow accumulation of skill.<\/p>\n Brooks\u2019s vision begins from a premise that the Catholic tradition has long rejected: that work is primarily a burden to be escaped. In Catholic thought, work is not an obstacle to human flourishing but one of its primary engines. It is the arena in which we cultivate moral character and responsibility.<\/p>\n For a faithful Catholic, work is the daily practice through which we participate in Creation and contribute to the common good. A society that treats work as a problem to be eliminated misunderstands both human nature and the moral structure of ordinary life.<\/p>\n Brooks draws a sharp line between \u201ccomplicated\u201d tasks (solvable, mechanical) and \u201ccomplex\u201d ones (relational, existential). \u00a0He seems to believe that these tasks are separate. But in practice, the two are intertwined.<\/p>\n The complicated work of preparing a lesson, grading a paper, drafting a report, or creating a budget is not separate from the meaning of teaching, mentoring, leading, consulting, strategizing, or forecasting. It is the substance of the vocation itself.<\/p>\n When AI removes the substance, it risks removing the vocation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She alludes to the work of teaching and learning, which I\u2019d like to go into in more detail. We teachers tend to enjoy interacting with students in the classroom, while disliking grading papers and preparing lesson plans.\u00a0 We are being told that AI could do the grading, the research for class preparation, putting together lesson plans, and writing tests.<\/p>\n On the student side, Hendershott tells about Einstein, an AI program that \u201clogs into Canvas [an online education program] every day, watches lectures, reads essays, writes papers, participates in discussions, and submits your homework automatically.\u201d\u00a0 Not only that, as I learned on the Einstein website,<\/a> it will also do the online teachers<\/em>\u2018 work:<\/p>\n By simply uploading a video, PowerPoint presentation, or document, educators can instantly create a fully immersive virtual course. Our advanced AI system automatically segments the content into logical mini-courses, generates relevant quizzes, voice-over (where necessary) and deploys an intelligent AI tutor to guide students through their learning journey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n AI can spare teachers the drudgery of the work of teaching.\u00a0 It can spare students the drudgery of reading assignments, writing papers, participating in class discussions, and doing homework.\u00a0 Teachers don\u2019t have to teach, and students don\u2019t have to learn.\u00a0 But the students get academic credit for letting AI take the course for them.<\/p>\n Writing, for example, is a \u201ccomplicated\u201d task that many people\u2013whether teachers, students, scholars, managers, or pastors\u2013find tedious and difficult, and it is something that AI can effortlessly emulate.\u00a0 But writing cannot be separated from the \u201ccomplex\u201d task of thinking<\/em>.\u00a0 Gathering thoughts and information, doing research and making sense of it, takes place in the process of writing.\u00a0 Writers seldom have a body of knowledge in their heads, which they then simply write down.\u00a0 Rather, writing embodies the mental process of reflection and communication.\u00a0 And communication is a relational task, in which one human being connects with other human beings.\u00a0 Other \u201cbusy work\u201d that AI can eliminate has similar value:\u00a0 planning, research, answering e-mails, sorting out logistical details, and even meetings.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Hendershott adds,<\/p>\n The greater mistake in Brooks\u2019 \u201cAI Happiness Theory\u201d is the assumption that leisure, rather than work, is the primary engine of human flourishing. The Catholic tradition has always insisted on the opposite: that meaningful work orders the soul toward purpose.<\/p>\n As far back as 1963,\u00a0Josef Pieper warned\u00a0in his book,\u00a0Leisure: The Basis of Culture<\/em><\/a>\u00a0, that a culture obsessed with escaping work eventually loses the capacity for genuine leisure \u2013 the kind of leisure that flows from an interior life that has been shaped by purpose and discipline.<\/p>\n When we treat work as a problem to be solved rather than a practice that forms us, we end up with neither: not the leisure we were promised, and certainly not the dignity we abandoned by allowing machines to do the work we should be doing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n