We know what a world without work looks like

This article originally appeared in Issue 15: Work. Subscribe to the print magazine to get future issues delivered to your door.

What will people do all day? I mean, of course, if the AIs surpass us at all economically necessary forms of labor.

There’s an emerging consensus on this point, assuming we’re all still alive and not subjects of a cyberpunk feudalist dystopia. When the machines can do everything else, our relationships will be what’s left.

Maybe we won’t have to work at all. Or maybe we’ll still have something that superficially resembles modern employment, just concentrated in what economist Alex Imas 1 calls “the relational sector” in his essay “ What Will Become Scarce .” We’ll always need humans to supply the human touch. And how will we get those relational jobs? Relationships, obviously. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, since everyone knows everything anyway.