Robert C.Wolcott, the Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, has written a thoughtful piece in the HBR about how automation will change human work and lives in the near future. He speculates, much as Keynes did in 1928, about the point at which automation replaces most human labour. To make his point, he refers to the work of Hannah Arendt from the 1950s. He describes the ways in which she categorised human activity thus:
“Labor generates metabolic necessities — the inputs, such as food, that sustain human life. Work creates the physical artifacts and infrastructure that define our world, and often outlast us — from homes and goods to works of art. Action encompasses interactive, communicative activities between human beings — the public sphere. In action, we explore and assert our distinctiveness as human beings and seek immortality.”
And then he makes the following points:
“Over the next 100 years, AI and robotic systems will increasingly dominate labor and work, producing necessities and the physical artifacts of human life, enabling more of us to ascend (Arendt did present this as ascending — this is a qualitative value judgment) to the realm of action. Of course, some people might engage in labor or work by choice, but choice is the essential distinction.”
Whilst it’s a lovely idea, I disagree with his conclusion.
Keynes argued in the last 1920s that by 2028, we would all be members of a leisure class, wondering how to spend our time. He predicted the world would become so affluent that we would not need to work. Sadly for pretty much everyone I know, it’s likely we’ll all still be working in 2028. What happened in the intervening years between Keynes’s predictions and now was an unprecedented increase in wealth and well-being in much of the world (as predicted by Keynes), the emergence of the service job, and the rise in consumerism (neither of which he saw coming). So instead of keeping our outgoings constant and funding spare time, we became beholden to a mortgage and increased our need to consume. The more you consume, the more you need to work… and if the roles are there to work in anyway, why not?
I’m afraid I cannot see consumerism going away anytime soon: Amazon‘s ad profits are growing and Facebook and Google’s profits are evidence of just how successful peddling to us is. The 1-click-buy is standard operating practise for many of us now. The increased use of AI and robotics will create a brand new class of ways in which to fund our acquisitions: Data scientists, mapping experts, nanotechnologists, robot maintenance personnel, the list is endless about the new kinds of roles new tech will bring.
A hundred years from how, I expect the purchases to be different but suspect the drivers for work will remain much the same as they were in Keynes’s day, and today: to buy stuff, and to feel worthwhile.