Is this the future of work, or does work have a future?

Image Tim Haynes

Do you live to work or work to live?

It’s a question that’s asked less often in the creative community, because for most, the answer’s pretty obvious.

Bringing ideas to life is a life sentence.

You can’t just switch off that frame of mind when people stop paying, or you hit 65.

Which is something those with yachts, vineyards and exotic car collections realised many years ago.

Whether they were running record labels, movie studios or ad agency networks, they clocked that you can pay creatives what we think is ‘a lot of money’ to do what comes naturally.

Throw in the chance at a few Grammys, Oscars or Pencils, and we’ll churn out stuff that can make you millions.

Occasionally, billions.

Indeed, Gillian Welch made art of the situation when she sang…

Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
That we’re gonna do it anyway
Even if it doesn’t pay…

For the record, the song is ‘Everything is Free’ and every word is so true it will make you weep. 

Particularly given she released it back in 2001, when most people would’ve laughed off what passes for today’s music industry as some kind of dystopian IP nightmare.

But back to the original question of why we work.

As much as we’ve spent the last few paragraphs taking potshots at fat cats, one thing they did offer was relatively stable employment to those whose talents were an awkward fit in the traditional job market.

Sure, it meant the boss got to live in a Bond villain lair with sweeping ocean views, but in exchange you got to do what you loved with the financial stability to pay rent or a mortgage and maybe put a few kids through school.

So, what happens when you take that away?

This is not a hypothetical by the way; the corporate world’s been under pressure for a while to embrace what its promoters call the ‘gig’ economy.

And that shift was well underway before the mass socio-corporate experiment of AI bolted on its training wheels.

In its new definition, ‘gig’ is really just Newspeak for a chunk of risk being removed from the capital class and lumped on people who depend on it for a living.

But before we buy into what utopians dub ‘the future of work’, it’s worth pausing to reflect on what we’re being encouraged to leave behind.

Those selling the dream say you can now “Be your own boss” and that the ideal employment regime “Isn’t flexible, it’s fluid” so you can achieve “Work-life integration within an AI-enabled passion economy.”

Basically, the stuff you hear on every third startup podcast, in between knowing nods from hosts with one thing in common; they tend to hang out with very few people who aren’t like them.

In other words, the global majority.

Those who see work - be it a passion or a chore - as a way of putting a roof over their heads and paying the bills.

It’ll reek of a lack of ambition to the self-starters, but the fact most humans crave this is essentially biological; we’re driven to find the safest place we can to rest, recharge, reproduce and nurture.

So, if we think new technologies are going to let us consign full-time work to the non-recyclables bin of history, we’d better be prepared to radically change nearly everything else.

For while some want to replace full-timers with machines or hybrid creatures who better align with the peaks and troughs of their business activity statement, a stable society is still structured around the concept of stable employment.

Little things…like education, banking, mortgages, insurance, relationships, tourism and family planning rely to a greater or lesser extent on there being at least one adult in full time employment somewhere in the mix.

It’s just possible the happy clapping “Everyone should be an independent contractor by now” crowd have not fully thought that one through.

But they really should.

And for reasons that have implications beyond how – or if – we’ll all be earning a living by the mid-century.

Advertising and marketing are the canary in the coalmine for a lot of things.

We’re always first to drop off the perch when a recession looms and the first to start chirping again when one’s on the way out. And by nature, we love nothing more than the early adoption of the shiny and new.

But I think that’s blinded some to the potential choking hazards of our newest toy.

Despite still using a fountain pen and Sharpie for our first draft of nearly everything, we’re no loom-smashing luddites.

The advance of digital technology in our time alone has made life immeasurably better for much of humanity.

Managed properly, it will continue to do so.

But despite the fact their current capabilities are being oversold like seats on a US domestic flight, the technologies grouped under the heading of ‘artificial intelligence’ have the potential to be unlike anything our species has ever created.

For many lay people already using them daily, they’re sufficiently advanced to be what Arthur C. Clarke dubbed ‘indistinguishable from magic’.

And therein lies the big problem.

If AI really is Skynet 1.0, then we should be terrified that the tech bros have dumped it on society with little warning, no instruction manual and no idea if or when the thing currently polishing your emails, making highly derivative art and churning out slightly creepy videos will start developing bigger ambitions.

At which time, an AI taking your job will be the very least of humanity’s problems.

But if, like us, you think AIs in the medium future will be less science fiction and more tools that can make your best people more productive or your worst more functional, then you won’t be firing your recruiter just yet.

For as contradictory as it sounds coming from serial freelancers, we reckon the more artificial intelligences influence your business, the more important real intellects prepared to work for you in exchange for a regular pay cheque will become.

And for evidence of that, look no further than the difference between the noisiest AI evangelist startups and the world’s big corporate players.

While the former are wildly overpromising what AI can deliver to anyone who’ll listen, the latter are either mandating the humans return to the office at least a couple of days a week, or if they’re enlightened, making it more attractive to do so.

Being an early adopting disrupter may get you invited on more podcasts, but it seems the weight of big clients and institutional shareholder expectations on your shoulders sharpens your focus on what actually works.

And for the foreseeable future, the big money is on that being humans who understand the difference between shiny new tools and a big idea.