The Future of Work and Money

(5 minute read)

What would you do if you no longer needed to work forty hours a week to afford a comfortable life?

Would you spend more time with your family? Travel? Exercise? Study something because it interested you? Start a business, write a book, volunteer, create music or simply spend longer sitting in the garden?

For most of human history, that question would have seemed absurd.

People worked because the alternative was hunger. They planted crops, cared for animals, built shelters and produced almost everything they consumed with their own hands.

Technology has gradually changed that relationship.

One farmer operating modern machinery can now produce more food than hundreds of agricultural laborers could once have grown. Machines manufacture cars, move cargo and perform calculations that would previously have required buildings filled with workers.

Yet most of us still organize our lives around employment. We exchange our time for money, then use that money to pay for food, housing and everything else we need.

Will that still be true in 2076?

When people discuss artificial intelligence and robotics, the conversation often begins with fear.

Will AI take my job?

For some people, the honest answer may eventually be yes.

Administrative workers, translators, drivers, warehouse employees, accountants, designers and programmers are already seeing parts of their work automated. AI can draft reports, analyze documents, create images and write software, while robots are becoming more capable in warehouses, factories and hospitals.

The International Labor Organization estimates that roughly one in four jobs worldwide has some exposure to generative AI. Yet complete automation remains limited because most occupations still require human judgment, responsibility or physical action.

For many people, their work is therefore more likely to change than disappear completely.

The pocket calculator did not eliminate accountants. Word processors did not eliminate writers. Digital cameras did not eliminate photographers. New technology usually replaces tasks before it replaces entire occupations.

A doctor may use AI to examine scans, but patients will still want a human being to explain the diagnosis. A lawyer may use software to search thousands of documents, but someone must understand the law and accept responsibility for the advice.

A builder may supervise robotic machinery rather than carrying every block by hand. A teacher may use an AI tutor while concentrating on motivation, discipline and curiosity.

The work remains, but its nature changes. That doesn’t mean the transition will be painless.

The person who loses an administrative job cannot instantly become a robotics engineer or nurse. New jobs may arise in different industries and require training that the displaced worker cannot easily afford.

History often looks smooth when viewed from a distance, but it can feel very different to the people living through it.

The mechanization of agriculture freed millions from punishing physical labor but also destroyed traditional rural communities. Factories eventually raised living standards, but the early Industrial Revolution brought dangerous machinery, polluted towns and child labor.

Progress often creates winners before society decides how to help those who lose.

The World Economic Forum estimates that economic, demographic and technological changes could create approximately 170 million jobs by 2030 while displacing around 90 million existing ones. That would still produce a large net increase, but the new jobs will not necessarily go to the same people, in the same places or at the same wages.

The future may therefore contain labor shortages and unemployment at the same time.

Ageing countries will desperately need nurses, carers, engineers and construction workers. At the same moment, many routine digital occupations may require fewer people.

That contradiction already exists. Businesses complain that they can’t find suitable staff while millions struggle to find secure, well-paid employment. The problem isn’t always that there’s no work. It’s that the available workers and available jobs no longer fit together.

Education will have to change accordingly.

The old pattern was simple. A person went to school, perhaps attended university or completed an apprenticeship, then used broadly the same skills for the next forty years.

That is no longer realistic.

People may have several careers during their lives. A qualification gained at twenty may be insufficient at forty, while someone in their sixties may still have another twenty productive years ahead of them. (By my way of counting, writing science fiction is my sixth career.)

Education may become something we return to repeatedly rather than something completed in youth.

AI may help solve part of the problem it creates. Personalized tutors could teach new skills at the student’s pace and adapt lessons to their experience.

A warehouse worker might learn to maintain robotic systems. A driver might move into fleet supervision. An administrator could become responsible for checking AI-produced work.

The most important ability may no longer be memorizing one set of facts. It may be learning how to learn again.

Technology may also reduce the number of hours people need to work.

During the nineteenth century, many factory employees worked twelve or fourteen hours a day, six days a week. Paid holidays were rare, retirement was unavailable to most people, and the weekend barely existed.

The working week shortened because machinery made people more productive, workers organized for better conditions and governments established limits.

A five-day working week once seemed radical. By 2076, the three-day week may seem equally ordinary.

If AI and robots allow a company to produce the same amount in half the time, society faces a choice. It could dismiss half its workforce and keep the additional profit, retain everyone while reducing working hours, lower prices or increase wages.

Technology doesn’t make that decision. People, companies and governments do.

This brings us to money.

Money is ultimately a method of distributing access to what society produces. We work, receive money and exchange it for food, housing, transport and services.

But what happens when machines produce an increasing proportion of those things?

Imagine a factory that operates almost continuously with a small team supervising thousands of robots. It produces twice as many goods as today while employing one-tenth as many people.

Society becomes wealthier because more has been produced with fewer resources. Yet if most of the income flows only to the owners of the machines, the wider population may feel poorer rather than richer.

The central economic question of the future may therefore be less about whether machines can create abundance and more about who owns them.

A world filled with productive robots could become extraordinarily prosperous. Food, clothing, housing and transport may become much cheaper. AI might provide education, legal guidance and basic medical analysis at very low cost.

If the benefits are shared widely, people may enjoy higher living standards while working fewer hours. If they are concentrated narrowly, technology could create immense wealth alongside widespread insecurity.

This is why ideas such as universal basic income are receiving increasing attention.

Under such a system, every adult would receive a regular payment sufficient to cover at least some essential costs, whether employed or not. Supporters argue that it would provide security as technology disrupts employment and allow people to retrain.

Critics ask who would pay for it, whether it would discourage work and whether governments could afford meaningful payments without increasing taxes dramatically.

An alternative might be universal basic services, with society guaranteeing essential healthcare, education, transport, housing support, internet access or energy. Another possibility would be a social dividend funded by taxes on highly automated companies or national investment funds.

None of these solutions is simple. Every system can be mismanaged or made unaffordable. It reminds me of the old saying: Capitalism is a terrible system. It’s just better than everything else we’ve tried.

But the underlying question can’t be avoided.

If human labor becomes less necessary, tying almost every person’s income entirely to a conventional job may eventually stop working.

That doesn‘t mean human beings will become useless.

Work provides more than money. It gives many people structure, social contact, pride and a sense that they are contributing.

A future with less compulsory work would still contain ambition. People would continue to build businesses, invent products, create art and conduct research. Others might spend more time caring for children or elderly relatives, volunteering, coaching sports teams or continuing their education.

Another science fiction writer described a future society in which people held three jobs at once. For about twenty hours a week, they worked at their chosen career, whatever that was. For another four hours a week, they worked for their society — as, say, a social worker, a tour guide, or a traffic warden. And for eight hours a week, they worked on a creative project, whether that meant acting, writing, painting, or anything else that took their fancy.

The end of compulsory forty-hour employment would not mean the end of useful activity.

It might mean that more people could choose which useful activity mattered to them.

There are also jobs we may not want machines to replace, even when they technically can.

We may prefer a human nurse beside a frightened patient, a human teacher encouraging a struggling child or a human judge considering the consequences of a sentence.

Efficiency is important, but it’s not the only thing that gives life value.

The future of work won’t arrive as one dramatic moment when robots take over. It will come through thousands of smaller changes.

One company will require fewer administrators. Another will introduce a four-day week. A hospital will use robots to lift patients. A seventy-year-old will begin a new career using skills learned from an AI tutor.

Some people will benefit enormously. Others will need help.

Governments will respond too slowly, companies will sometimes behave selfishly, and predictions will repeatedly prove wrong.

Yet the long-term opportunity is extraordinary.

For most of history, humanity struggled because there was never enough food, energy, manufactured goods or human labor to provide everyone with a comfortable life.

By 2076, our greatest challenge may be very different.

Machines may be capable of producing more than we need, while society struggles to decide how the resulting wealth should be distributed and what human beings should do with the time technology has returned to them.

Perhaps our grandchildren will look back at the forty-hour working week in much the same way we look back at six-day factory labor.

They may wonder why we spent so much of our lives performing tasks that machines could have done for us.

The future of work and money won’t be decided by technology alone.

It will be decided by whether we use technology merely to create greater wealth, or to create better lives.

Till next time,

Brian

BA Gillies
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