The Importance of Leisure in the Age of AI

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Peeper: One of the things that's happening is what I think affects our capacity for leisure. We focus on the useful, on utility, but we don't ask the question "what am I doing?" He says with AI there could be a generation of virtual realities or even loss of sense of real reality. Peeper: Human beings need to rediscovering leisure in that sense relating to the natural world.

In the early 1900s, the philosopher Henry Adams expressed concern about the rapid rate of social change ushered in by new technologies, from the railways to the telegraph and ultimately airplanes. If we transpose Adams's concerns onto the power of artificial intelligence--a power whose rate of acceleration would have exceeded his wildest dreams--you might feel a bit uneasy. Listen as philosopher Jacob Howland of UATX speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about why too much leisure is at best a mixed blessing, and how technology can lead to intellectual atrophy. They also speak about the role of AI in education and its implications for that most human of traits: curiosity. Finally, they discuss Howland's biggest concern when it comes to outsourcing our tasks, and our thinking, to machines: that we'll ultimately end up surrendering our own liberty.