What’s the Future of Work?

How will automation change the nature of work, productivity, and meaning in our lives.

Historically we have always needed to do “work” — to feed and shelter ourselves and our families. Over the course of humanity our work has progressed from subsistence, through the agricultural age, industrial age, and the information age. Each time our basic needs have been addressed with a smaller percentage of our effort and resources and focused an increasing amount of energy and resources towards conveniences, luxuries, and efficiencies.

What does the future of work look like? What do we need to do and what do we want to do? There have been some interesting studies that show that improvements in the human development index (HDI) — a crude proxy for how well our human needs are met (e.g. happiness) — are correlated with increasing amounts of energy use — which is also a proxy for productivity, and production of goods and services. The study also shows that past a certain point of energy use the HDI plateaus, e.g. with more energy use, more stuff, more luxuries, more everything — we no longer gain more “happiness”.

For the foreseeable future we will need to continue to “work” to address our basic needs of food, housing, clothing, and healthcare as well as infrastructure such as energy, information/communication, transportation and distribution. There will continue to be supportive sectors such as education, financial services, manufacturing and retail as well as government’s role in safety and security for example.

If an increasing amount of our work is to be automated and our society’s time was to become increasingly more free — as a more basic question — what should we be doing and spending our time on?

Its an interesting question that I’ve struggled with — if the farmer is producing food so that the doctor can eat, and the doctor is taking care of the IT worker so she can make productivity software for the factory, and the factory worker uses that software so he can produce machines, and the machines are used so that the farmer can farm more efficiently, etc. — are we all just working for each other in a big circle of self-support — so that we can eat more efficiently and increasing our consumption of basic (and luxury) goods?

Is the old adage “eat to live, live to eat” really just that simple and true?

Back to the original question — if those basic needs were met — what would be doing? Who are all of us in the service sector working? Are we working to free some of society up for some other purpose? And if so what is that?

Perhaps a burgeoning entertainment sector will be how we entertain ourselves and enjoy our time? More Netflix, more VR, more games, and ideally more arts — will perhaps find ways to entertain ourselves for enjoyment and pleasure. Or will our pursuits turn more noble like the thinkers and scientists of past — who will spend their time on philosophy, science, and research?

The Future and the AI Age

Moving from the Information age into the AI / Automation age will not be without its bumps and bruises. However, we can expect to see that technological advances will continue pushing the same broadest societal trends, namely that our most basic needs will be provided by a decreasing percentage or amount of human labor.

If most of our needs will be provided by a decreasing amount of human labor, and the spoils of those technological gains will continue to be accumulated by a smaller share of society — what do the rest of us do?

Instead of resigning to a world singularly of Universal Basic Income where most of us do nothing but “live to eat” and perhaps be entertained — perhaps we should be taking the opportunity to ask the questions of the technologies we are inventing now and if they are well suited for our future needs? I’m not at all suggesting in luddite fashion that we stop the fast march of AI or genetic engineering…on the contrary I’m asking that we ask what goals and problems are we aiming to solve with those technologies? Right now it seems we aim to solve problems of efficiency and cost. Can we remove the most basic manual labor jobs and automate them? While this is good for business and the bottom line and perhaps at a societal level will continue the percent of human effort spent on our basic needs — it does not address the issues of what we humans will be doing?

This brings me to the question that I’m currently puzzled by: How can we utilize technology, particularly AI and Automation, to strengthen (rather than obviate) the needs for humans in our lives? Quantified learning for example is a concept to leverage AI to improve human learning and development.

Just as we envisioned farming, manufacturing, and then computer jobs as a new construct and scaleable way to make our lives better — what does that next generation of jobs and the future of work look like?

The Nature of Work

Before we get there, let’s dig a bit deeper: What is a job? A job is some work that is done for valuable consideration e.g. that is paid for. While all jobs are paid — is all work paid? Historically not at all. And even today, not completely. Certainly the work we do as a spouse, parent, child, sibling, neighbor, community member are not often paid. Does that make them less valuable? Does that mean we don’t do our best work as a parent — because we aren’t paid for it? Or are we doing our best work as a parent because its an investment in a future ROI? And even if we don’t look at our children as a meal ticket for our retirement, perhaps its an ROI on happiness that we’re looking for, not a financial one e.g. the achievement and success of our children bring us social status and happiness, and perhaps future grandchildren which we can enjoy.

What about hobbies? We don’t often get paid for those? Do we play music, paint, play sports, make crafts for any valuable consideration?

Is a job or work worthwhile ONLY if it’s paid? Do we feel valued only if we get paid for it? I think the PTA leader, the campaign organizer, the dad, the sister, the hobby painter, the organ player at Church — all may obtain a different, and perhaps deeper, satisfaction out of their work than the type the get paid for.

Payment is important for several reasons — just as money is important: it enables goods and services to be traded easily; it enables credit and investments in unique ways. But if our general human needs (what we think of as our current monetary needs) are met, its not clear or obvious that payment is a required aspect of having good work.

Then what is a meaningful job? Perhaps we can redefine it as: some work that is done for valuable consideration (but does not require monetary payment). It could be that it produces intrinsic satisfaction, it could be for human connection, it could be for national pride.

At current, without universal basic income, the vast majority of individuals that will be displaced by automation will need new ways to produce the basic income they need. It’s a whole other question about whether this is the most intelligent manner of distributing the pie.

How to Enable Jobs of the Future

What then, is the form of a good job and what will be required to get there? I see at least three things required:

1. Evolve our concept of work organizations out of cookie cutter jobs
2. Focus on work that uniquely leverages human connection and collaboration
3. Redefine our economic engine and how we think about success

Evolve out of Cookie Cutter Jobs

To replace millions and millions of jobs — it appears that we need to replace farms, manufacturing jobs, construction jobs, trucking jobs with something similarly cookie-cutter and mechanistic. But do jobs really need to be cookie-cutter to be scaled? Or, alternatively, perhaps our management and organizational practices need to evolve to learn how to engage large number of disparate type of workers — that are not “cookie cutter”?

We will need to evolve away from the factory-line and cookie-cutter jobs and explore how to utilize unique human capabilities at scale. This will require new thinking, new management practices, and definitely new organization structures. While we like the “digital” world where everything fits neatly into 1’s and 0’s and particular departments and job roles, indeed the world we are heading into will require more creative, more “messiness”, and be more “analog” to leverage unique human capabilities better.

We will also perhaps need a broader array of organizations that purely profit seeking businesses. Not just government and non-government organizations but community organizations, extended family organization, academic organizations focused on certain research problems, etc. We already see many of these today and the open source movement is an interesting example of a distributed organization working towards similar goals.

Human Connection

With due recognition of the rise of the AI Age, I think one important aspect of a good job is that it utilizes those capabilities that make us uniquely human and are perhaps not easily automat-able. Repeated computation and tasks are clearly not good domains. Tasks that require our “whole” self — human interaction, creativity, unpredictability, multiple modalities etc — could be better areas.

Additionally, we can see across the increasingly we are suffering from loneliness and lack of connection. And while its possible we can genetically engineer this need away, or we can largely replace many of our basic human connection needs through robots, AI or VR, it appears that for the foreseeable future the wild, chaotic world of humans and human relationships will continue to provide a unique value to each of us.

Refine Meaning and Success

And last, we will need to evolve and redefine our “economic” engine and what we define as success. As I wrote about here, we’ve perhaps passed peak consumerism where the incremental money, resources, and “stuff” we acquire, will not increase our happiness and perhaps even decrease it slightly in some cases. How do we redefine the modern economy? Our economy has been based on being productive in producing goods/services and thereby acquiring money/resources to satisfy our needs. As we move beyond those needs our satisfactions can and do evolve. The desire to achieve and “succeed” will always exist, but the nature of that success will certainly evolve. This article, for example, discusses how as “stuff” has become more accessible, the wealthy spend more on education and health for example. Will success be defined by strong family, friend connections? Contribution to the world and society? How will the engines of influence — marketing, entertainment, popular culture — evolve to further the ambitions and goals of society? If the needs to promote and drive the capitalist engine wane in those regards will we as society enable a different narrative to emerge as the influence engine.

Next Generation of Jobs

Given these thoughts, what specifically do these next generation of jobs look like? What will we be working on? I’ve been reading and thinking about this and the how the future of life and society in the advanced AI age will evolve and its a fascinating and challenging topics. I will be sharing some thoughts about that topic in a separate blog soon.