The Importance of Leisure

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I agree with you that work is an important source of meaning for many people, not all. But do you want to argue that we should stop technologies that make it easier to take leisure? Well, I actually have a lot to say about leisure in connection with that knowledge. Yes, work is safer by all kinds of measures; even I was just looking the other day about deaths per hundred thousands of teenagers or children in the 1970s. It's much, much lower now than it was.

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.