We should stop defending jobs and start planning for a world without them

Unless something truly unexpected stops AI progress, it looks increasingly clear to me that AI will probably surpass humans at every economically valuable task. If that happens, AI gets picked over a human for all or nearly all work. And not just single tasks. AI systems will solve problems autonomously and coordinate with each other across large projects. They’ll probably end up running entire companies, maybe entire industrial sectors, at a level of efficiency and productivity we can barely measure. At that point professions stop being necessary. Why hire a person to do something that’s already fully automated? That seems to be the trajectory we’re on. And if it is, the logical reaction as a society isn’t to dig in and defend the current system built around professions. It’s to work toward a system where people can live without working. That means changing the economic foundations of our society, not patching them. We could have the best quality of life in history without anyone having to go to a job. No technological revolution in human history has ever been reversed. Pandora’s box is open. All we can do is fight for this technology to deliver the best possible outcome for us. So what would it actually take to get there? What’s the first step?