When AI Gets To Work, What Will People Do?

Today, most work involves shuffling paper, moving pixels on a computer screen, or talking  with clients or colleagues. In the near future, most of that work can, and surely will, be handled by Chat GPT or more nearly omniscient AI systems to emerge. 

For example, you have a high fever and are coming out in spots. You call the doctor's office. Having identified yourself, you will be answered in your preferred language and even your preferred dialect and accent. You explain the reason for your call. The AI receptionist will ask for some particulars concerning your condition, then give you the best relevant advice, e.g., take an aspirin, keep well hydrated and stay warm etc. So AI will eliminate not only the doctor's receptionist but, except for special purposes such as setting a broken bone, the doctor himself.

The same kind of elimination of work will occur throughout the economy. Need a bank teller? No need, just speak to the microphone at the counter and state the service required. Cash will be dispensed via a slot at the front of the counter. 

The only jobs that will be secure are those that involve wealding a spanner, driving a lawn mower, or some other task that has not yet been automated. But AI will vastly accelerate the process of automation. Bus drivers, truck drivers, farm tractor drivers, backhoe operators, nuclear power plant operators, professors and prime ministers? All better replaced by AI.

So what, then, will people do? Simple. They will just do more of what they have enormous amounts of time to do now. One hundred and fifty years ago, men in England worked an average of about 60 hours a week. Since then the average working week in England has decreased around 40%, while real wages have risen about seven-fold. A similar reduction in working hours is likely in the age of AI, but occuring not over 150 years but in perhaps only ten or fifteen years. Whether incomes will increase in the same seven-fold ratio as seen in England over the last 150 years seems less likely, if only because the world economy appears already to be pushing environmental limits to sustainability. Pretty certainly, however, in ways that are environmentally benign, the standard of living worldwide will massively increase.