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A.I. and the End of Work
Why our kids need to think more about who, and not what, they want to be
When we were kids, probably the most common question grown-ups asked us was, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And back then there was no shortage of seemingly fixed and available options: doctor, lawyer, teacher, businessman, etc. They felt like stable social categories that had always been part of the fabric of human society, and always would be.
Except they weren’t, and they aren’t. Already A.I. can diagnose early stage cancer better than trained radiologists, and can perform document review in complex litigation faster and more accurately than licensed attorneys. Bill Gates thinks A.I. will replace most human vocations within 10 years. Personalized A.I. tutors and virtual classrooms were once the stuff of science fiction stories by Neal Stephenson or Chen Qiufan. But it’s easy to imagine their becoming reality in just a few years’ time.
As a student of history, I’m well aware that abrupt technological changes have always wrought havoc on labor markets, displacing workers and sometimes even eliminating entire industries. And of course those changes had cultural and political ramifications, too. But at the end of the day, they also tended to create more new industries and…
