What happens to us if we no longer must strive and make an effort? This question is particularly relevant today, when ChatGPT can help us with, well, just about anything.
It is a question explored in the book The Machine Stops by the English author E.M. Forster. The book was published in 1909 and set in a world in which people live isolated from each other in small rooms. They spend their days staring at screens, sending text- and video-messages to each other. Food, shelter, clothing and entertainment are created by a machine that was once developed by humans but that no one understands anymore. Not having to make an effort has made people mentally degenerate, unable to fix the machine if it breaks down.
The Machine Stops is a goosebump-inducing dystopia, and it is staggering that the book was written more than 100 years ago, when computers and artificial intelligence were many decades into the future. In automation, Forster saw the threat of isolation, passivity, and lost mental flexibility.
I think his concerns will become more relevant than ever as AI streamlines the production of goods and services to the point that many of us will no longer be working. You don’t have to try many AI services to realize that fewer of us will be needed in the labor market. Yes, of course, new jobs will appear, but hardly as many as will disappear.
The devil’s advocate asks why this is a problem. We could use the time to enjoy ourselves. Maybe, but the problem is that we have not evolved to enjoy ourselves for long.
The brain, which has not changed in 10,000 years, evolved to make sure positive emotions soon go up in smoke, to be replaced by new desires. The reason is simple:The brain wants us to keep striving for the next goal so that we have the motivation to go on another risky hunt or go to the next watering hole a mile away even though the hole might be empty or the hunt unsuccessful.
Humans are the ultimate strivers. This is because, for 99.9% of our history, we could not survive without constantly striving. A world where we no longer have to lift a finger may be comfortable, but for most people, it will feel empty and meaningless. And it will make us dumber.
But isn’t it possible to build friction and cognitive challenges into our lives even if we work less? We could ask AI to generate a sufficient amount of friction to tickle our need to strive.
Maybe, but we also evolved to avoid doing things unless we have to. The reason is that, for almost all previous generations, it was a prerequisite for one’s survival to not waste energy if you didn’t have to. To exert yourself unnecessarily goes against our nature.
In the coming years, the balance between these two basic psychological needs—friction and comfort—will become increasingly important. How it will play out is not determined in advance, it is up to us, and the better we understand ourselves, the wiser decisions we can make.
That is precisely why I recommend The Machine Stops. The book does not yet have the same status as George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but it certainly deserves as much..