Flaky utopia: Musk’s dream of technology freeing the world of work and poverty needs a reality check

“My prediction is that work will be optional,” Musk said. “Assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, then money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.” Humanoid robots, Musk said, would become “the biggest industry or the biggest product ever, bigger than cellphones or anything else, because everyone’s going to want one.”

Then came the cherry on top. “AI and humanoid robots will actually eliminate poverty,” Musk added. “There is basically one way to make everyone wealthy, and that is AI and robotics.” All this is expected to take place within the next 20 years.

Let’s not spend too much time here pondering the future of work in a world of AI and robots. These prognostications have been appearing for some years now.

Robots (driven by early AI) came first. In Rise of the Robots (2015), Martin Ford showed that machines could undertake many physical tasks: make coffee and burgers, stack and unstack warehouses, drive vehicles and even do some types of surgery. Experts estimated that more than half the industrialized world’s work could soon be done by robots.

Ten years later, there is a flood of alarmed studies on the possible job impacts of AI, which, among other things, can write books, music and computer code (all of which require higher-level cognitive skills than moving or manipulating objects). This time, well over half the jobs in the industrialized world are supposedly in danger of extinction. And if Musk is correct, something close to all jobs may disappear.

Let’s also pay no more attention here to some of the most significant economic and social implications of a future in which jobs and money are both irrelevant. Let’s not dwell on the fact that such a society must have some form of universal basic income (UBI), which must be paid for by owners of the means of production, the very same class that is known for rigging national tax policy in order to pay the least.

Let’s forget that there will be mass unemployment (even if it is gradually imposed through shorter work weeks of four, three and eventually zero days). Let’s not think of the inevitability of mass protests and perhaps revolution as a reaction to unimaginable levels of inequality.

Let’s also forget one of the more important lessons of history: that ordinary people do not rebel against poverty (if it is shared), but inequality. And let’s not quibble about the fact that these imaginings pertain only to the developed world; it will be a while yet before ‘everyone’ in India can even think of wanting a robot. All these are subjects worthy of whole shelves of books.

Let’s focus instead on the idea that this leisure society is something to be desired. In this Muskian vision (can we call it Elongate?), ordinary people will spend their unlimited leisure time playing games and cultivating hobbies (like gardening).

It is implied that they won’t be unhappy or dispirited without work or purpose because leisure is what makes people truly happy. Age-old obsessions with power, status and recognition will disappear because their idle minds and bodies will become indolent with the pleasure of leisure. All the necessary work will be done by machines directed by an industrious capital-owning class and their techno wizards while the ‘working class’ will become, without work, a joyful and wealthy ‘leisure class.’

This is a radical view of capitalist society, not only different from all that we have learnt from Marx, Weber and numberless intellectuals, but an upside-down perspective from the originator of the idea of a leisure class.

Thorstein Veblen was an American economist, sociologist and philosopher who in 1899 published a book called The Theory of the Leisure Class. It was a genuinely original work which continues to be studied more than a century later.

Veblen argued that the capital-owning class was primarily interested in “conspicuous consumption” (a term Veblen coined that has become part of the language) and “conspicuous leisure” (this was well before Facebook became the means of inducing vacation envy).

In this version of society, ordinary people work hard so that rich people could enjoy unproductive, wasteful and leisurely lives. Written during the gilded age of ‘robber barons’ like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Veblen’s critique of unbridled capitalism hand-in-glove with the state should ring a bell for those who follow contemporary India.

The Muskian view of ordinary people as wannabe moochers just waiting for an opportunity to benefit from the work done by others is reminiscent of another right-wing vision of ordinary people as looters living off the ingenuity and hard work of superior men. The latter is, of course, the thesis of the libertarian bible Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

There are differences between the two visions. In Muskworld, the state is absent. It nonchalantly looks away while the basis of its power and status is taken over by corporations. In Randworld, the state is the enemy, as it imposes regulations seemingly for no other purpose than to curb the genius of Atlas giants.

An upheaval awaits the labour market, for sure, and no one knows how things will turn out. But let us not be seduced by the simplistic utopian tales being spun by those who stand to gain the most from this upheaval. People have complicated desires (yes, even ordinary people) and reality is messy. Strap in for a wild, unleisurely ride.

The author is a professor of geography, environment and urban studies and director of global studies at Temple University.