Post-work society
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In futurology, political science, and science fiction, a post-work society is a society in which the nature of work has been radically transformed and traditional employment has largely become obsolete due to technological progress.[1]
Some post-work theorists imagine the complete automation of all jobs, or at least the takeover of all monotonous, rule-based, predictable and repetitive (and thus unworthy of humans) tasks in the future by ultimately cheaper, faster, more efficient, more reliable and more accurate intelligent machines.[2][3] Additionally, these machines can work in harsher conditions and for longer periods of time without stopping than humans,[4] which is expected to eventually lead to massive economic growth, despite high rates of ever-increasing human unemployment.[5] Overall, this development would lead to an enormous increase in prosperity, whereby it would be the task of politics to distribute this wealth evenly within the population.[6][7]
Future directions
[edit]Future directions include the reshaping of the human role in the workplace, stressing the relative strengths of humans capable of adapting and integrating technology into their work and interaction.[8] In addition to these capabilities, scholars emphasize the importance of humans taking advantage of these relative strengths, offering several areas which humans can remain competent in a rapidly developing workplace. These include emotional intelligence, service orientation, resource management skills, communication skills, and entrepreneurship skills.[9]
Scholarly literature defines such areas where machines may surpass humans as "task encroachment" [10]. "Task Encroachment" presents an issue of growing encroachment of AI and automation into human work, especially in manual and cognitive tasks. In a post-work society, such issues imply that humanity must pivot towards roles that require emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills, areas where machines still lag behind. To adapt, humanity should focus on cultivating these uniquely human attributes while societal structures might need to reconsider the value and distribution of work, possibly reducing the reliance on traditional employment as a means of livelihood.
Other theories of a post-work society focus more on challenging the priority of the work ethic, and on the celebration of nonwork activities.[11]
Near-term practical proposals closely associated with post-work theory include the implementation of a universal basic income,[12] as well as the reduction of the length of a working day and the number of days of a working week. Increased focus on what post-work society would look like has been driven by reports such as one that states 47% of jobs in the United States could be automated.[13] Because of increasing automation and the low price of maintaining an automated workforce compared to one dependent on human labor, it has been suggested that post-work societies would also be ones of post-scarcity.[14][15]
Literature
[edit]- Kathi Weeks: The problem with work: feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8223-5112-2
- Daniel Susskind: WORLD WITHOUT WORK: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, 2020, ISBN 9781250173515
See also
[edit]- Critique of work
- Four-day workweek
- In Praise of Idleness
- Humans Need Not Apply
- Imagination age
- Post-capitalism
- Refusal of work
- Tang ping ("lying flat")
- Technological utopianism
- Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
- The End of Work
- The Future of Work and Death
- Workism
References
[edit]- ^ Frayne, David. "Towards a Post-Work Society". No. 2. ROAR Magazine.
- ^ Lynskey, Dorian (2020-01-09). "A World Without Work by Daniel Susskind review – should we be delighted or terrified?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
- ^ Ox, Audit (2023-07-27). "Chat GPT Creator Sam Altman Says Jobs Will Go Away Because of AI, It Will Not Just Be a Supplement…". Medium. Retrieved 2024-03-20.
- ^ Beckett, Andy (19 January 2018). "Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
- ^ Lu, Yiwen (2023-06-14). "Generative A.I. Can Add $4.4 Trillion in Value to Global Economy, Study Says". New York Times.
- ^ "How AI Could Make Everyone Rich". Lifewire. Retrieved 2024-03-21.
- ^ Clifford, Catherine (2021-03-17). "OpenAI's Sam Altman: Artificial Intelligence will generate enough wealth to pay each adult $13,500 a year". CNBC. Retrieved 2024-03-21.
- ^ Bianchini, Massimo, and Stefano Maffei. "Facing the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Empowering (human) Design Agency and Capabilities through Experimental Learning." Strategic Design Research Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 72-91. Academic Search Ultimate, https://doi.org/10.4013/sdrj.2020.131.06.
- ^ Kenayathulla, Husaina Banu. "Are Malaysian TVET Graduates Ready for the Future?" Higher Education Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 3, July 2021, pp. 453-67. Academic Search Ultimate, https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12310.
- ^ Susskind, Daniel. A World without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond. United Kingdom, Allen Lane, 2020.
- ^ Thompson, Derek (2015-06-23). "A World Without Work". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2022-10-25.
- ^ "What Will We All Do in a Post-Work Society?". Treehugger. 2021-02-12. Retrieved 2022-10-23.
- ^ Frey, Carl Benedikt; Osborne, Michael (13 April 2018). "Automation and the future of work – understanding the numbers". Oxford Martin School. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
- ^ Wolla, Scott A. (1 January 2018). "Will Robots Take Our Jobs?". Economic Research - St. Louis Fed. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
- ^ "Traditional employment is becoming obsolete". www.futuretimeline.net. Retrieved 2021-08-27.
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