Why and what do we need to work?

Question from the Internet:

“What is humanity’s purpose in working when all jobs can be replaced by AI?”

The human purpose of working is to feel “useful” and “needed” towards others and society. The biggest problem with unemployment is not the difficult financial situation unemployed people find themselves in.

The biggest problem is that they feel unnecessary and surplus in society. Moreover, as they receive financial aid and other support, they also feel like a burden on the rest of society; they feel like receiving “alm” while being unable to give anything back in return. This touches our self-esteem most deeply and unpleasantly, bringing out an intolerable shame that originates from our core, “human” being.

It is true that we can replace most — even the most complex and unique — jobs with robotics and AI. And why should we not use such an opportunity when we can make work more efficient and productive by that using fewer resources and producing better outcomes?

But at the same time, we have to make sure that people do not remain idle and have very important, unique and irreplaceable tasks and jobs towards society for which they justly and proportionately receive what they need and deserve for maintaining their crucially important mutual contribution.

And there are unique, specifically “human” tasks and jobs no robot can replace. Our most important role is not producing and consuming goods. We have been misleading ourselves since the industrial revolution, building societies and education on the premise that producing and consuming products and services is the purpose of human life.

The purpose of our human life is to consciously become similar to Nature’s life-creating and life-sustaining system. We have to learn and practice how to build Nature-like mutual integration and mutual cooperation between us, so a unique, so-far unknown and unfelt collective sense of existence is born between us.

This is a task only “sentient” beings can perform and maintain. Not even the most advanced AI can truly create and sustain life on an emotional level.

We need the right education that can teach us and, most importantly, can help us feel what “being human” means and how we can all develop and sense a truly Human, collective existence with its unique collective consciousness, compared to what even the most advanced AI looks and performs like a child’s toy.