The human work that survives automation

I’ve been thinking a lot about AI lately, and how it relates to the kind of work our team does to try to chip away at bottlenecks to economic growth. One key question here is whether the economy of the 2030s and beyond is going to be, well, recognizable: are most people going to be working? Will they earn enough to meet their basic needs? Will humans be economically necessary anymore? One of the better contributions I’ve seen to this debate is a new post from UChicago’s Alex Imas on the rise of “relational work.” Some stuff, like food, people spend less of their income on as they get richer. Other stuff they spend more on, and this stuff, Imas argues, tends to include irreducibly human elements. Present-day billionaires, for instance, spend more than normal people on just about everything, but especially more on services: spas, waitstaff, private chefs, personal trainers, etc. It’s a compelling case that human labor will still matter and the economy will remain somewhat recognizable, though still very, very different from what we’re used to.