We would spend our time complaining how lousy that the AI performs at its jobs.

(Y)

The Lutheran insight that work is a central human act remains:

…the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks…all works are measured before God by faith alone.

Martin Luther

It doesn't matter whether the work is domestic duties, civic duties, or wage-earning employment: work is holy.

If human labor is replaced by entirely mechanical production, then it will be a life-and-death matter to redefine the meaning and value of ordinary people, and ordinary work. Without vocation, (however that is defined) Homo Operatur will be hard pressed to fill his years with meaning, or even survive.

I save time, you spend time, they waste time. Time is money.

Or possibly not.

The trouble with Maslow is that he couldn't multi-task. That and getting his pyramid upside down. Everything depends on the sanity of the individual. It is madness to look for security in a world of madmen; it is foolish to expect the insane to be able to feed themselves or look after each other lovingly. And it is ridiculous to expect mechanical thinkers directed by madmen to solve the problem.

How does the un-actualised self-actualise? The problem is not that we have been too busy with the mundane to consider the finer things, our own being. It is that the task is obviously impossible. The madness that is in my life will act on my life; the madman is in charge of his own therapy.

We have already arrived at the point where most of our time is spent in entertainment and recreation, to distract ourselves from the impossible problem. The impossible problem cannot be solved by saving and spending time. Time is the essence of the problem; time is the continuation of the un-actual self.

I defer to Dostoevsky:

" Now I ask you: what can be expected of a man since he is a being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove himself -- as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.

And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse ( it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), maybe by his curse alone he will attain his object -- that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated, chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don't know?"

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I imagine that to answer this one need only look at how a retiree, who has a reasonably comfortable pension, spends their time.

My impression is that some enjoy their retirement, doing further education, gardening, volunteering, craft and other hobbies, visiting friends and relatives, and travel. But some find the psychological transition to retirement an ordeal, and feel like they are going mad with the time hanging so heavy on their hands.

Perhaps a post-work world would be like a world full of retirees, only they'd be younger on average.

Until they have to deal with an automated teleservice.

Because the foundational areas are taken care of by the A.I. would we be spending our time focusing on art? physics problems? love & social life? — intrapersona

I don't know about where anybody else lives, but what I observe in my social environment is people spending almost all of their free time and energy being consumers.

They do not spend a lot of that free time on personal relationships. They do not spend it on civic activities. They do not spend it on constructive things like writing, woodworking, reading philosophy, etc.

Instead they spend almost all of that time shopping for items that will collect dust in their homes or end up in a landfill; on TV, movies, ball games, concerts, video games, and other products of the entertainment industrial complex; eating out all of the time; visiting​ a gym and a GNC to spend money and time trying to sculpt the perfect physique; travelling to every tourist destination that the tourism industry has manufactured and aggressively marketed; etc.

Expect that consumer lifestyle to dominate even more if AI takes over a lot of the work we do.

I think that I will move to Pluto if I am alive to be part of that.

Expect that consumer lifestyle to dominate even more if AI takes over a lot of the work we do. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

In other words, it will be Black Friday every hour of the day, every day of the year.

Do you think world issues might be solved faster because humans would spend less time in "monotonous labor" or "work"? Thereby allowing a significant portion of the population to engage in finding solutions to current dilemmas in all domains from science to spiritual to politics to psychological and social issues etc. — intrapersona

Maybe physical and material issues, but mental illness would become an epidemic.

The Lutheran insight that work is a central human act remains:



…the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks…all works are measured before God by faith alone.
Martin Luther

It doesn't matter whether the work is domestic duties, civic duties, or wage-earning employment: work is holy.

If human labor is replaced by entirely mechanical production, then it will be a life-and-death matter to redefine the meaning and value of ordinary people, and ordinary work. Without vocation, (however that is defined) Homo Operatur will be hard pressed to fill his years with meaning, or even survive. — Bitter Crank

I can't find any excerpt that I could neatly quote here, so I can only direct people to the full essay. But your words remind me of what Wendell Berry says about work, art, economy, etc. in Christianity and The Survival of Creation.

We would do the same thing that we used to do when slaves did all the work for the rich folks, unless of course the A.I. thought for us as well, in that case, global takeover... obviously

Thereby allowing a significant portion of the population to engage in finding solutions to current dilemmas in all domains from science to spiritual to politics to psychological and social issues etc. — intrapersona

The ugly truth is that we have the time and resources to do this now, but we still don't do it. Don't expect that some fairy tail AI will make this possible.

The ugly truth is that we have the time and resources to do this now, but we still don't do it. Don't expect that some fairy tail AI will make this possible. — praxis

When you are arriving 10 hours early or something like that to be first in line for Black Friday deals, you don't have time to worry about reducing poverty, controlling superbugs, reducing psychological distress in the population, etc.

You sure don't have time for those things if you then spend most of your free time in front of that TV set you saved a small fortune on at that Black Friday sale.

If AI is doing all of the work of making things then people will be consuming those things 24/7/365. It will be Black Friday all of the time.

Isn't replacing labor in our capitalist system the reason for automation with AI? That capitalist system will still be there along with one if its requirements: people willing to consume more and more stuff. And they will have all day, all week, all year to do it.

Until we run out of things that we can commodify and material and energy to make commodities with, that is.

If AI is doing all of the work of making things then people will be consuming those things 24/7/365. It will be Black Friday all of the time.

Isn't replacing labor in our capitalist system the reason for automation with AI? That capitalist system will still be there along with one if its requirements: people willing to consume more and more stuff. And they will have all day, all week, all year to do it. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't think it would result in a black-friday forever situtation, Capitalism where everybody is indefinitely rich.
I've spent quite some time trying to figure out such a society, and the AI would have to be our mommy, and like good mommies, doesn't spoil the child by granting every request. It can't be capitalist, because all capitalism is based on tracking indebtedness to the labors/products of another, but if nobody works and stuff is free, there is no equity anywhere.
So textbook communism? Not meant the bad way that western culture paints that word. Families run by communism: All children obey rules and expect to be cared for in return, but the children have no external responsibilities of their own.
The AI is the mommy, and provides food and shelter for all, but not unlimited. It would be big-brother in that it observes all. This would seem necessary to preserve law and order. Not sure what punishment would be like, since incarceration seems to be simply a less comfortable jail cell than the one we're already in.
Sans capitalism, we wouldn't really own anything including a home. But there needs to be provisions for ownership of irreplaceable things like one's own creation (artwork and such). If I travel elsewhere, the place I put my art might be occupied by another, and the artwork needs storage of some sort. Such storage must be limited.
Would there still be an economy based on human-produced products? I am a great artist and produce original paintings that are in demand, a resource that is limited, despite the AI being able to reproduce the work effortlessly. Would there be a concept of the original still being better than one of these copies and thus 'worth something'? Flip side is that my child brings home an ugly piece of school art that had value to me just because it becomes part of the memorabilia that makes up the history of my child. I go on vacation and the AI finds it most efficient to destroy the thing when I'm gone and make a new identical one when I return. Am I offended? If so, original works have value, and capitalism cannot be completely dead.

The AI is of course going to have to do something humans seem incapable of on their own: Find a balance where resources are renewable and thus the books balance. It would have to do what are currently immoral acts: Compulsory birth control and probably death control. A mommy (one mommy, not multiple competing ones) can do this. Our current morals (be they from God or society) seem designed for maximum suffering. The benevolent AI would need to rewrite that code.

I think you overlook a crucial detail. AI isn't a computer like your laptop or even a supercomputer for that matter. Perhaps the tag ''artificial'' is misleading. It's only relevance here is that AI isn't natural in the sense biological beings are. Beyond that ''artificial'' is the last thing AI is. What it is is intelligence - the singular, identifying, distinguishing quality of what it is to be human - extracted, purified, and perfected. In essence it is the self-actualization of humanity itself.

I think you overlook a crucial detail. AI isn't a computer like your laptop or even a supercomputer for that matter — TheMadFool

I agree , there is a difference between machines and AI. The OP might be titled what will we do when machines do all the work.
If AI exists then there is no reason for it to do any work for humans at all.

Luther had no idea what was coming so is not qualified to answer this question, yet the answer is at hand from the quote. Luther and his gang of priests had the full benefit of having vocal machines do all their work for them, whilst they wasted their time on the idle pursuit of theology with which they overturned society and caused the death of millions across Europe in the succeeding centuries.
It is said that the devil makes work for idle hands, such is the case for religious men both Catholic and Protestant; none of whom did an honest days work their whole lives.

This seems to be an individual problem that people (from the West) seem to face. I would imagine people living in a centrally planned economy run by AI (think China) wouldn't have these issues, at least not to the same extent as say spending time with other people, enjoying one's community, etc.

Regarding Maslow, it is interesting to speculate on the path (or paths) to the pinnacle of "self actualization". Can just about anybody achieve it? Would it require some sort of special education?

The ugly truth is that we have the time and resources to do this now, but we still don't do it. Don't expect that some fairy tail AI will make this possible. — praxis

Very true but we do have pressure that is induced by family friends that make us ought to think we should attend university after school etc. I was saying it would be a more general, slight trend away from labour on to complex disciplines like computer science, physics, chem, biology. Think about, if we didn't need any manual labourers anymore because we had so many robots, what would all the imbeciles do?

Regarding Maslow, it is interesting to speculate on the path (or paths) to the pinnacle of "self actualization". Can just about anybody achieve it? Would it require some sort of special education? — Jake Tarragon

Expressing one's creativity, quest for spiritual enlightenment, pursuit of knowledge, and the desire to give to and/or positively transform society are examples of self-actualization. Obviously some are more talented than others, or at least have more insight than others.

Obviously some are more talented than others, or at least have more insight than others. — intrapersona

The guy above is pointing the wrong way!

However they want to?

Michael Ossipoff

I believe one plan is to tax the robots, presumably to support imbeciles like me. I'm cool with that.

The guy above is pointing the wrong way! — Jake Tarragon

If you adjust the exposure you can see that it's not a dude... and she's not pointing.

not a dude — praxis

You guys crack me up!