Work sucks, I know

- blink-182

There are many smart people in the AI safety crowd that think AI is going to kill everyone and if they’re right about that then this entire post is moot.

But so long as they’re not right about it, I’ve got a bone to pick.

You know when you think you’re on the same page as everybody else and then something happens and you realise that actually you’ve been on very different pages the entire time? Think back to post-season 4 Game of Thrones when the show was starting to show cracks and as it got progressively worse some people actually enjoyed it more, claiming that it was better now because things were moving faster.

Or when you and a friend really enjoyed the Lord of the Rings trilogy but then when the Hobbit trilogy came out they ended up preferring it over LOTR?? (Sorry, Annie)

That same feeling of despair floods my soul now.

People really don’t like the idea of AI taking everybody’s jobs and I just can’t relate. I can relate to the fear of you losing your individual job while most people keep theirs, but I can’t relate to the fear of everybody losing their jobs.

I work my ass off. I studied like a madman in highschool, and I work like a dog now. I’m one of the very few people who has found their passion (programming) and gets to do it every day. I’m one of the lucky ones, and I cannot wait until I no longer have to work.

The best times of my life have been when I’m not working. Highschool summer holidays were golden. You have enough time to unburden yourself from the mental shackles of intense study and you get to actually enjoy life without the nagging feeling that you’re neglecting your obligations.

Even the shorter holidays I’ve taken as an adult have been great. I took a week off to do a side project and play video games in December and it was fantastic. I had my phone on silent the entire time, I didn’t listen to any podcasts, or watch short form video content, or use social media, or any of the other cheap dopamine hits that are necessitated by an intense work schedule. As much as I wished that I could continue such a ‘wholesome’ routine after returning to work, I knew that was a fantasy.

As AI continues to advance and the number of people uninformed or pathologically contrarian enough to call LLMs mere ‘stochastic parrots’ continues to dwindle, there is on the horizon the potential for another fantasy, a life without work, to become reality.

You probably know multiple people (if not the majority of your friends and family, including yourself) who are immiserated by their job. It’s stressful, they hate their coworkers, they hate their managers, they hate their customers, it doesn’t pay well, it’s not fulfilling, sometimes the work is borderline unethical. You spend half your waking life at work: what kind of life is that to live?

Bad jobs aren’t just bad while you’re on the clock: they’re also bad while you’re off the clock. People’s brains are fried from working all day and all they have the strength to do afterwards is watch television, doom scroll, or partake in some other similarly unhealthy, undignified activity.

But, you say, being unemployed is even worse! I don’t buy it. Sure, being unemployed today means you’re wallowing in self pity, doubting your worth after countless job application rejections, watching your peers go to work while you produce nothing of value for society. That sounds shitty.

But guess who else produces nothing of value for society and loves life? Retirees! Same number of working hours (zero), completely different level of happiness. Anybody who’s done B2B cold calls knows how frequently you’ll call up a number, ask if the person still works at X company, and they’ll say ‘Actually I’m retired now’. I always ask how they find retirement and I’ve yet to hear somebody tell me that it wasn’t awesome. Why the difference? Because there’s no social expectation for retirees to bust their balls every workday, and because they have enough savings that they aren’t impoverished by their lack of work.

It is twisted that we live in a world where the only time you get to experience all that freedom is when your body is old and your mind has begun its decline.

When people bemoan mass unemployment from AI, all I hear is a lack of awareness about how bad the status quo is, and a lack of imagination for how good things could be.

But, you say, work is a source of meaning! Then why, given how low the unemployment rate is, are we living in a meaning crisis? Boy, my life would be so much more meaningful if I could learn an instrument, learn to cook, train for a marathon, volunteer in my community, raise a family, coach my kid’s sport team, write a novel, write a play, perform in a play, take up a sport, build some muscle, take up gardening, organise a neighbourhood event, learn a language, or any other fulfilling activity. Why am I not doing those things? Because I’m too busy bloody working!

Perhaps your concern is that AI will hollow out the middle class while the rich get richer. But remember what kind of world we’re talking about here: a world where the cost of producing goods approaches zero because robots can farm, manufacture, and deliver anything. In a world like that it would be a genuine logistical challenge for the ultra-rich to prevent cheap goods from reaching you. They would have to coordinate to suppress abundance on a global scale. You don’t need to hope for benevolent oligarchs, even with malevolent ones you’re not going to go hungry.

Are there going to be genuine challenges that we as a society will have to face once work becomes a thing of the past? Of course. There’s going to be huge challenges, not least of which is the transition itself. But I’d much rather face those challenges than pull the plug on AI progress and maroon ourselves in the status quo, whose hellishness we’ve all unconsciously grown over-familiar with, and which we only now have a true chance of escaping.

If there’s one thing the AI safety crowd and I can agree on, it’s that I’ll be retiring early. I for one cannot wait.