Why the robot revolution should be propelled by the aspiration to leisure, not the dominance of work, says Robert Skidelsky
We’re heading into the year’s most enforced leisure period, where even the busiest of us can find time to reflect on the means and ends of existence. So it’s worth hearing about how much the norms of work dominate our lives - and what it might mean to use both automation, and climate crisis, to shift the balance back towards free time.
This blog comes from the esteemed economist, and definitive biographer of John Maynard Keynes, Robert Skidelsky. Titled “Economic Possibilities for Ourselves” (a pun on Keynes’ famous 1930 essay, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”). It despairs that so much of the “robot revolution” talk in news media still seems to focus on work as the ultimate context for their impact.
Skidelsky tackles the idea that all that’s required to cope with AIs and robots that will entirely substitute for certain distinctive forms of human labour, is that we learn to program the code that drives them:
What do we mean by upskilling, and what might its consequences be? Often, heavy emphasis is placed on the importance of better technological education at all levels of society, as if all people will need to succeed in the future is to be taught how to write and understand computer code.
As the technology writer James Bridle has shown, this line of argument has a number of limitations. While encouraging people to take up computer programming might be a good start, such training offers only a functional understanding of technological systems. It does not equip people to ask higher-level questions along the lines of, “Where did these systems come from, who designed them and what for, and which of these intentions still lurk within them today?”
Bridle also points out that arguments for technological education and upskilling are usually offered in “nakedly pro-market terms,” following a simple equation: “the information economy needs more programmers, and young people need jobs in the future.”
More to the point, the upskilling discourse totally ignores the possibility that automation could also allow people simply to work less. The reason for this neglect is twofold: it is commonly assumed that human wants are insatiable, and that we will thus work ad infinitum to satisfy them; and it is simply taken for granted that work is the primary source of meaning in human lives.
Historically, neither of these claims holds true. The consumption race is a rather recent phenomenon, dating no earlier than the late nineteenth century. And the possibility that we might one day liberate ourselves from the “curse of work” has fascinated thinkers from Aristotle to Russell.
Many visions of Utopia betray a longing for leisure and liberation from toil. Even today, surveys show that people in most developed countries would prefer to work less, even in the workaholic United States, and might even accept less pay if it meant logging fewer hours on the clock.
The deeply economistic nature of the current debate excludes the possibility of a life beyond work. Yet if we want to meet the challenges of the future, it is not enough to know how to code, analyze data, and invent algorithms. We need to start thinking seriously and at a systemic level about the operational logic of consumer capitalism and the possibility of de-growth.
In this process, we must abandon the false dichotomy between “jobs” and “idleness.” Full employment need not mean full-time employment, and leisure time need not be spent idly. (Education can play an important role in ensuring that it is not.)
Above all, wealth and income will need to be distributed in such a way that machine-enabled productivity gains do not accrue disproportionately to a small minority of owners, managers, and technicians.