By Roger L Simon

I won’t be here when AI comes to full fruition, whatever that may be, or if there is such a thing, but it’s already clear it will have a monumental effect on our lives to the extent that the way we function today would be unrecognizable.

Consider this: Young people are being told ad infinitum that white collar jobs are a thing of the past. Forget those Ivy League degrees or pretty much any four-year college. They should train to be tradesmen—electricians, plumbers, construction workers, something hands-on and blue-collar—to live useful, lucrative lives. If not that, an engineer.

The government and private sector are already on this; trade schools are springing up everywhere to fuel the myriad AI data centers spreading across the globe from here to Bangalore. This country and the world are going electric. The jobs are there to be found.

All well and good. True enough— in the short run… the very short run.

At the moment, everyone from the Chinese to Elon Musk is feverishly working on robots, improving and refining them as fast as they can. Already, they do many tasks, from building cars to serving meals in hospitals.

How long before a robot shows up at your door in a self-driving vehicle to fix your plumbing? (“Hello, Mrs. Sanchez. I’m Rob. I understand you’re having trouble with your garbage disposal.”) Or repair power outages? Or build houses, even power plants?

They can do much of that now, though on a more rudimentary basis. In five or ten years, robots will be able to do those tasks better than humans.

Whether it’s five, ten, or even thirty years, it’s a distinction without a difference in the grand scheme of things. So much for those “high-paying” tradesman jobs. In another two or three generations, they will be gone. Perhaps, engineers will hang on for a bit, but pretty soon, the robots will take over for them, too.

What then? What about… the arts? Isn’t there a songwriter, novelist, or painter lurking inside all of us?

Well, some of us, maybe, but having just completed a novel to be published in March, I have experimented with AI on several levels and can report that it is already impressive, if not yet ready for prime time. Still, it was able to design a cover for my book that was more than acceptable. Despite that, I trashed its work out of some guilty sense of commitment to my fellow humans and hired a real artist, who did a fine job.

This novel is meant to be the first in a new series, and I have already begun the sequel. But the way things are going, AI could outdo me on writing the second or third one. Frankly, I don’t want to know. (AI has already written the number one Country hit. I want to say I could tell, but I’m not sure I could. SAG is going bonkers over AI actors.)

But that‘s my problem. Much more important in the public sense is who is going to pay for everything when there are no, or almost no, jobs of any sort? Those who are supposed to know, like Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan), have been advocating for more planning on job displacement, but that already seems passé. Some have suggested a “minimum basic income” or another stipend. Maybe that will work.

Even assuming that is eventually solved, something else troubles me more: What do we actually do with our lives if we can’t work and/or don’t have to?

You don’t have to be a Freudian to see justification in Sigmund Freud’s contention that the two main things through which one gains happiness in life are love and work. He left out religion. Still, without work, something that, for an adult, usually takes up more hours of the day than anything else, we have a gaping hole in our existence.

How many days do you want to sit on a beach, play golf, or even brush up on your Shakespeare? A few, sure, but then…. Maybe it works for some people, but for most of us, this is a road to depression. We want to accomplish something, make some contribution to the lives of our fellow citizens or our families, make a mark. It doesn’t matter what it is, so much as it is. We need a purpose.

I want to console myself with the thought that somehow this will work out. New forms of jobs will magically appear. God or G-d will provide that missing purpose. Who else? That is the most optimistic result I could imagine, and it well could be. But as I pointed out at the top, I am unlikely to be here to find out.

Oh, yes, AI has good parts. It’s great if you want to plan an itinerary or need some medical advice (with the necessary caveats) late on a Sunday night when you can’t reach your doctor. It also tells you how to fix just about anything and how to start a business of virtually any sort, and breaks it down for you step-by-step. It will also tell you how to use robots and where to buy the best one. It answers any question. On X, people use it to settle arguments, overruling humans (Ugh!). For some people, it provides companionship. (That part I don’t want to think about.)

Enjoy it while you can.

First published in American Refugees