The End of Nine-to-Five
For the well qualified, if AI hogs all the boring job options humanity relies on for a paycheck, dare we hope that after the initial shake up, people will pivot back and pursue whatever genuinely brings them joy? It’s a widespread reality that most people hate their jobs.
Pope Leo’s ode to human greatness, the magnificently titled document, “Magnifica Humanitas”, raises the most profoundly rattling question on everyone’s minds: in an optimisation-oriented society, what happens when we are inferior to the technologies we have created? Work, stresses the Pope, is not just about income. It is a “requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfillment”. Dwelling on the future of work is depressing as we read daily that AI is diminishing opportunities not just in entry-level jobs, but altering careers in investment banking and law. And, the final scope of AI’s displacement is anybody’s guess.
Like the Pope, we have all been raised to believe diligence and perseverance is a virtue. The traditional beaten road to a successful life has been scoring well in school, college, a specialisation if you’re lucky, then a stable career for the next several decades. There’s the thought deeply rooted in history that a person who doesn’t work full time may be morally suspect. (An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.) Even the Bible warned, “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” Throughout the ages but especially in the last hundred years, our self worth is inextricably tied up with productivity and success. The first question anyone asks at a party is, what do you do? The right answer raises one’s stature. But we’re entering an era of the very real possibility that people will wake up in the morning and have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Will how we view work change? Perhaps, at social gatherings, the initial question will be asking about peoples’ hobbies instead.
For too long, we have all fallen for the righteous view that one must have some kind of vocation to justify a right to existence. People who have enough don’t necessarily have to “earn a living”. They shouldn’t be sneered at for going back to learning or engaging in community service. It should strike anyone as odd that volunteering in India is seen as a euphemism for being incapable of finding something real. Governments have their own sobering motivations to keep inventing employment schemes — like India’s MNREGA — a large population with too much free time poses a danger to the social order. The Pope is right when he says that people feel a need to contribute meaningfully to the world but it’s easy to forget that of the three billion working people on this planet, most wake up and head to unskilled, labour-intensive employment. They’re sanguine about the drudgery involved because they need the money. Work is rarely worship. For most, it’s a means of survival.
For the well qualified, if AI hogs all the boring job options humanity relies on for a paycheck, dare we hope that after the initial shake up, people will pivot back and pursue whatever genuinely brings them joy? It’s a widespread reality that most people hate their jobs. Often, circumstances dictate careers and ambition requires making cold blooded choices. If there’s no security in anything, one is free to choose whatever one enjoys.
Work will, in fact, become a perpetual hustle. Till quite recently, people went about careers knowing it’s a slow and patient climb up a corporate ladder but there are regular increments and better designations along the way. It’s not that this kind of quiet toiling didn’t have its frustrations but there’s comfort in knowing that one could join an organisation and not worry about getting sacked. Sure, there’s freedom in carving out one’s own (tentative) path but it comes with a lot of stressful uncertainty. One must have some sympathy for the 20-somethings entering the workplace who have no idea how a new technological age will reshape their lives.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
