This post is not about how and when AI (Artificial Intelligence) will take over and humans will be left with nothing to do in terms of work. I believe we are far away from that, and we are still not sure whether we will see that level of superintelligence in our lifetimes.

What I want to focus on is this: given that we are working towards a world where AI could potentially do anything a human can (Artificial General Intelligence) and that intellectual tasks are slowly being outsourced to AI in phases; this is probably a good time to pause and think about how a world like that would look.

Revisiting Purpose and Meaning of Life in an AI-Influenced World

You might have heard of this old story of the businessman and a fisherman: A businessman on his vacation sees a fisherman leaving his boat after catching fish. The businessman advises the fisherman to catch some more fish so that he can buy a bigger boat, catch more fish and do this for many years to settle well. The fisherman asks “And then what?”. The businessman says then the fisherman could spend enough time with his family, sleep late and only have to catch enough fish. The fisherman replies: “That’s what I already do now.”

This story tells us two things:

  • While the end goal gives you accomplishment, enjoying the process gives you fulfillment.
  • Sometimes we forget why we are doing something as we get lost in the goal. I will talk about the implications of this in the context of AI/AGI in the next section below.

For many, a vocation gives a deep purpose to their lives. This could be because of many reasons – a job that you have been doing for ages becomes your habit and hence your identity. You lose identity the moment you stop doing that work.

This is one of the problems that newly retired people face. Once you are retired, you essentially lose purpose. Unless you have something beyond your job that you enjoy doing, and that gives you a purpose, it becomes a problem. It becomes a mental block rather than liberation.

Without getting too much into the philosophy of it, let’s think about a world where AI is as capable as humans. Intellectual work becomes just maintaining and instructing AI. AI would also essentially guide the humans on how to and what to instruct the AI to get things done (This is already happening to an extent now). We might even not need this layer of human work since AI is already as good or better than humans at that point.

What purpose would human intellect have then?

We could argue that it is creativity. While today’s AI is intelligent enough to convince a lot of humans on its creativity, a super-intelligent system would probably be highly creative as well by definition.

There are a lot of things that still won’t change, and perhaps improve. Sports and recreation for instance, that’s a space that would be complemented by AI. You have more time to hang out with the people you like, play golf and maybe catch up with your friends and family much longer than now. But again, recreation cannot be a vocation for everyone.

Going back to the main premise of this post - And then what? I had some initial thoughts – that humans would go back and focus on creative arts, commentary (we are always eager to know what others feel about something), relationships, meditation, streamlining the superintelligence and so on. I asked this to some of the best reasoning AI models available today, out of curiosity. I got similar answers but more detailed. It also told me that there would be a shift from economic value of tasks to the social status of it. But again, I am not convinced that we will have enough to replace the need for a vocation for everybody. Of course, some of us would be more ‘employed’ than others, in categories I mentioned above but at this point I would need more introspection on this.

Doing a Reality check – and should we slow down?

The reality is that AI is just a machine. It’s some complex statistical systems and code, refined so beautifully that it works ‘like’ humans to an extent. We are not advanced enough to replicate a human brain to form superintelligence. Forget that, we do not even know how a complex system like our brain works in its entirety. The developments that are happening are brilliant, no doubt about that, but we are nowhere (yet) near building a machine that is as good as a human in all aspects. We probably need to remind ourselves about this, given how fast things are moving, and it is so easy to get lost.

I am not saying we should not embrace AI, in fact I would call myself a proponent and enthusiast of AI. It’s a great tool, but for now that’s all it is.

On slowing down:

I genuinely feel we should take a pause often, in these times, to remind ourselves what we are capable of, while embracing what’s going to come next.

I would also remind myself to enjoy the little chores that may lose meaning as they get replaced by AI in the coming future. We never know, somewhere in the foreseeable future there might be an anti-AI movement, because people are fed up with it, and they miss being human. It’s really impossible to predict how we feel about this in the future, but let’s embrace the change while not forgetting who we are.

Let’s embrace the change while not forgetting who we are.

When it comes to AGI and advanced AI, we should think and ask:

  • Will it immediately wipe out many jobs such that it creates a significant imbalance in the economy? Will it make the lives of thousands of people miserable (for a few months or more)? The economies around the world cannot adjust to a drastic change overnight and it may not be worth it, if it causes more harm than benefit. (A phased approach helps)
  • Are we racing towards AGI just to win a capitalistic goal, or do we genuinely want to advance as humans? What’s our unbiased motive here?

Summing it up

While AI is not going to take over humanity’s vocation anytime soon, and we don’t know when it will happen, it still makes sense to pause and think what would happen in a scenario like that.

Just like the fisherman in the story, maybe we should ask ourselves if we are already fulfilled with what we do in our jobs. And if AI could replace that part of our job, perhaps we should ask what would give us back the fulfillment, or if at all there is anything that would.