The End of Work?
While I was at the supermarket today, I noticed that they have doubled the number of self-checkout stands, while removing three more of the full-service checkstands.
Most likely, part of the picture is that 3-4 local jobs will go away... as they seem to be doing in many places. I've also noticed that several of our downtown stores have cut back their hours to being open just four days a week.
Perhipherally related...
Yesterday, Mrs. Denmarkguy was at the dentist, needing to get a loose crown replaced on a front tooth.
As I remember this kind of process from the recent past, it's a matter of the dentist making an impression of the area that needs the crown, putting on a temporary while the information is sent off to a lab that makes the crown that then is sent back and the temporary is removed and the permanent Crown is installed after conderable fidgeting and correcting to make sure everything is as it should be.
Much to our surprise, the procedure with the latest equipment they now have at our dentist basically creates a 3D imaging scan of the required place for the crown, a few adjustments are made, the color of the tooth is matched, the file is sent to an in-house 3D printer which creates a new crown in about 30 minutes from pretty much the same material they used to make cubic zirconium (artificial diamonds) with and the new crown is installed all in one process.
Of course, it is a very cool thing to have when you are somebody who's a patient suffering from some dental anxiety, but the other side of that equation is of course that there is no longer a lab where a human being makes the crown... there is simply a machine.
Meanwhile, I contemplate my own line of work as a book editor... which is quickly becoming obsolete. As a book editor I am increasingly being replaced by AI and chat GPT, which — while it might not be able to do a perfect job — is capable of doing a "98% job" that most people are perfectly satisfied with.
And don't get me wrong, I get it. Why on Earth should they pay me $1,500 to review a book manuscript and it'll take me two weeks to do it, when you can pay chat GPT nothing and come out with a marketable result for pretty much nothing or as part of your $40 a month subscription to have a beefier version of chat GPT.
The broader ramification, however, is that I don't have (much) work anymore. And when I don't have work I can't pay my bills. And I definitely can't buy any of the products that now are being produced by automation.
And that is where my thought process usually runs into trouble. I appreciate the fact that we might not have to work because AI and automation does everything for us, but if AI and automation is making all these products and we're not doing anything that resembles work and hence allows us to collect a paycheck, how are we going to be able to buy all these products being made by the AI?
The obvious answers are either that we end up receiving some kind of basic income so we can get by in the most fundamental way, or everything around us just automatically becomes free because... well... we don't have the means to pay for it, right?
In a way, it reminds me of visionary science fiction author Frederick Pohl, writing back in the 1950s and creating a collection of stories called "Midas world," in which the world has reached the stage of development where robots take care of everything and the actual measure of high status has been flipped on its head, to where not having to consume is the luxury, because lesser status humans are tasked with endless consuming in order to keep the robots busy. By law.
I don't know what kind of world we are headed towards, but I am pretty sure that the idea of "work" will look quite different by the year 2050.
What do you think?
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Created at 2026.03.08 00:36 PST
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Soon it will be all self check out with a robot running the service.
Or one of these stores you have to swipe your card before you go in so they can charge you if you remove something from the shelf, no staff needed.
Welcome to the human free future 🤣
@denmarkguy
Made in Canva
!ALIVE
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You did an excellent job of putting that conundrum into words. And I have no answers.
Twenty years ago I worked at a theme park during the summer. I was fifty-ish, while most of my co-workers were teens. A few of them had a good work ethic, but many of them were just there to obtain a paycheck by their presence, not by actually working for it. Some of them learned to work; some never did. If AI and robots take over all the work, most people will never learn how to work, which is a pity, because it's good for us, psychologically if nothing else, to know how to work and feel the satisfaction of a job well done and payment earned.
This is nice, have an inspiring day
!ALIVE
!INDEED
Maybe it was Pohl, but I'm pretty sure Asimov also had a story about the luxury of meagre living in a superabundant world of a utopian future.