The way AI is developing, we are told that we are moving closer to a post-labour economy. AI will certainly take away many of our jobs. AI in league with Quantum Computing, Robots and other automation is all set to change our lives. Automation was earlier relegated to industrial world, but with the growing capabilities of AI, we are having abundance of cognitive labour performed by machines. Thus, AI is all set to disrupt our industry, knowledge production and its transmission as well as health care and entertainment industries. AI may produce new jobs but what any automation does is save money and thus provide free capital. This is why some of us think that human labour will be completely taken out of some domains and we shall be accelerated into a post-labour economy.
Our cognitive labour will be substituted by AI . AI using Large Language Models (LLMs) are already composing scripts for movies and other creative art works. They seem to do it with efficiency and fast . Human creativity when augmented with AI will rise to new horizons. Open space AI and LLMs will enable us access as well as produce goods and services. But when AI replaces human cognitive labour itself we will come steps closer post-labour economy. Wil the coming of post-labour economy good for us? Will it not dehumanize us? The answer is a mixed bag.AI can intellectually challenge us in new ways. It will above all provide efficiency, speed and accuracy at low cost . This price collapse will open democratic access to several goods and services to all humans. Education, health care along with entertainment will cost less unless, AI business barons are made to create monopolisties. But with humans being left out from active cognitive labour, we may become duffers.
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It may be important to think what will remain and what will be on its way if we are put under post-labour economic conditions. The new scenario will affect private sector industries. This is because human beings being jobless will lack buying capacity to consume many goods and services. Hence , it will be left for the government to operate the public sector and we will have to depend mainly on a welfare state. We being job free will have lots of leisure and therefore, we will become fully reduced to a state of being consumers. Will this mean we shall reach Plato’s communism or Marxist’s primitive communism? This would mean we are moving towards deglobulisation and a new market paradigm will burst forth in front of us. It will provide digital goods and services on demand. With 3D Printing and it likes, we may even have possibilities of getting physical goods on demand. Indeed , we are on our way to post-labour economy.
