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Sunrise — The edge of the disc touches the horizon. Day begins here.

Meaning

What is left to do when everything can be done?

The question

Part of our sense of meaning comes from being useful: feeding, building, healing, discovering. If that usefulness moves to machines, it is not only work that wavers — it is a way of justifying our being here.

But some things are only worth anything because we do them ourselves. Nobody asks a machine to go for a walk on their behalf, or to love on their behalf. The question of meaning, in the age of artificial intelligence, may come down to this: learning to tell what can be delegated from what has to be lived.

Still open

  • What becomes of work when it is no longer necessary?
  • Is a work worth less if nobody laboured to make it?
  • Is meaning found, or made?

Essays

  • What cannot be delegated

    If machines outdo us at almost everything that produces a result, what remains is whatever is valuable in the doing itself. Perhaps that is where meaning always was.

Back to the night: Superintelligence