Artificial intelligence will inevitably take over many human jobs, but this will come at a cost.

Healthy work is essential to human well-being: people will have to keep some jobs for themselves, not for AI.

Allocating jobs to AI based on profit-loss criteria ignores the intrinsic value work confers on workers.

In the 1983 movie Local Hero [1], men representing a Texas tycoon try to convince a Scottish beachcomber to sell his beach so the tycoon can build an oil terminal there. You'll be paid millions, the tycoon's reps tell the beachcomber, you'll never have to work again. The beachcomber looks at them in astonishment. "We all have to work," he admonishes the men. Besides, he adds, if he sells his beach, there will be no one to look after it properly. I think of that scene when I hear, on an almost daily basis, about how artificial intelligence (or AI), and large language models in particular, are taking over tasks that a big tranche of humanity—from computer coders to medical aides, translators to taxi drivers, graphic designers to salespeople—once assumed would always provide them with a living. An MIT study recently concluded that current AI capabilities "extend to cognitive and administrative tasks spanning 11.7% of the (US) labor market [representing] $1.2 trillion in wage value across finance, healthcare and professional services." The chief executive officer of Anthropic claims up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs will be grabbed by AI in the next five years, while Microsoft AI's CEO has predicted it will take only a year for most white-collar work to be taken over by artificial intelligence platforms.

But what happens to people if they don't work?

The optimistic view is that as AI takes over more and more tasks, not only does it allow workers to drop boring clerical or factory work in favor of labor requiring human intelligence and skills (or in favor of hobbies........

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