We will all have more leisure time in the future: Difference between revisions

{{a|shitmaxim|

[[File:Dinocheckers.jpg|450px|thumb|center|Our future. Pity the poor [[robo-slave]] (out of picture): having to watch the idiot [[meatware]] mangle a basic Spassky/Fischer opening must be some kind of ''torture''.]]}}This idea, propagated by [[thought leader]]s like {{author|Ray Kurzweil}},<ref>{{br|The Singularity is Near}}</ref> John Cryan<ref>[[Rumours of our demise are greatly exaggerated - technology article|Rumours of our demise are greatly exaggerated]].</ref> and dashing young heir to the Susskind clairvoyance dynasty {{author|Daniel Susskind}},<ref>{{br|A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond}}. See also {{author|David Goodhart}}’s more thoughtful (but still, on this point, misguided) {{br|Head Hand Heart}}.</ref> posits that [[Chatbot|robots]] and [[artificial intelligence]] will, shortly, supplant the need for human labour ''altogether''. We, the [[meatware]], will shortly be [[Technological unemployment|technologically redundant]]. The ''lot'' of us.

Which poses the question: seeing as we won’t be working [[Jacquard loom]]s, wiping arses, writing [[A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond - Book Review|wishful dystopian techno-political tracts]] or [[Change manager|managing business change programmes]] anymore, ''what to do with all the spare time we’ll suddenly have?''  

On this view there be nothing left to do: we will all just loaf around, playing [[chess]] and drinking grappa the way Mediterranean pensioners always have, only with robo-slaves hovering around to serve the booze and wipe our arses. Sounds great, doesn’t it! Especially if you don’t dwell on the thought that your [[robo-slave]] could wipe the floor with you at [[chess]], too, if it felt like it.

In any case: ''nice lack of work, if you can get it''.  

Now if something about this scenario nudges your implausibility hooter, that makes two of us. For one thing, from our [[perspective chauvinism|vantage point]], the last thirty-odd years have been one long [[Cambrian explosion]] of technology (''t’internet! iPhones! SETI@home! Uber! Drones!''), but so far there is no sign of ''any'' extra leisure time.  Work — new work, derivative work, previously unimagined work — is piling up. Granted, a lot of it is ''crap'' work: [[internal audit]], software [[change manager|change management]], six-sigma process analysis and [[talent acquisition]] — hardly the effervescent future we envisaged as wild undergraduate dreamers — but it definitely is work, and it definitely ''isn’t'' going away. (You do wonder: had our elders foreseen this new world of work, would they have told us? [[Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?]])

In any case, the unknowable ''then'' has coagulated into a crushing ''now'', and the reality is this: ''there is more work to do now than ever.'' Work is here, it is overwhelming, it is debilitating, and it is barricading the way to that chessboard in Στούπα, with no end in sight.  

The millenarians ask us to believe that a 5,000-year-old asymptote will suddenly invert. But ''how''? ''When''? ''Why''? ''No-one knows what we will be doing in ineffable, co-evolving future'': ''we'' don’t, and [[chatbot]]s ''definitely'' don’t. It might not be [[Change manager|regulatory change programme management]] (though, ahhh, don’t ''bet'' on it) but, if the past is any guide, it ''will'' be something, it ''will'' be [[tedious]], and it sure as hell ''won’t'' be slugging back ''génépi'' over a backgammon board in the ''Haute-Savoie''.

“Ahh,” say the [[digital prophet]]s of our time, “but ''is'' the past any guide? We say it is not.<ref>They have learned the compliance mantra: [[Past results are no guarantee of future performance]].</ref> ''[[This time is different]]''. This time the machines will ''not'' just be our handmaidens; ''they will replace us altogether''.”

Okay; let’s run with that for now. Even if you are right, [[thought leader]] types, your theory of [[technological unemployment]] assumes:

*that all human activity in the economy can be and, before long ''will'' have been, articulated in a way that can be entirely, reliably and cheaply carried out by [[artificial intelligence]];

*that once they have been so articulated, those activities will nonetheless hold their value and won’t become ''worthless'' overnight, as has every other artisanal craft made redundant by machinery in human history;<ref>Ask yourself: how much would you pay to deliver a first-class email? Or to get your digital photographs developed?</ref>  

*that, in other words, an entire economy not only can be fully determined —  ''solved'' — but has been: that our current polity is in a fully [[Taxonomy|taxonomised]], [[Taylorism|Taylorised]] end-of-history state in which no new activities or work categories are possible, and all that machines can look after those that do exist.

''These assumptions are transparently absurd''. They get the [[Yngwie Malmsteen paradox]] 180° back to front. The more information processing power we have, the more complicated our information structures will be. This is because we are lazy, backward-looking creatures. Increasing automation increases [[complexity]], multiplies the interconnectivity between components of our distributed systems, accelerates the speed at which data circulates, and [[Tight coupling|tightens the couplings]] between components. The [[JC]] has been harping on about [[systems theory]] and [[complexity]] a lot recently, but these are not trivial problems. [[Artificial intelligence]] cannot solve them. We are going to be needed for a long time yet.

In a {{nutshell}}: put away the checkerboard and stick the ''limoncello'' back in the cupboard. There’s work to do.

*[[Systems theory]]