le-mark
13 hours ago
I recently read Kurt Vonnegut “Player Piano”, a novel that addresses automation taking over the economy. It’s not explicitly AI but addresses the same issues. Published in 1952, it was Vonneguts first novel and a real product of the post war era.[1]
Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain [2]
[1] https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/player...
devindotcom
10 hours ago
Great book.
But if you want some even earlier forward-thinking stuff, look up Forster's "The Machine Stops." It's not a full book, more a novella if it's even that. Extremely prescient!
And of course if you haven't read the relevant portions of Butler's "Erewhon," it's remarkable how closely they map onto today's issues. He kind of takes Thoreau's "Lo, men have become the tools of their tools" a few more stops down the line.
euroderf
3 hours ago
Player Piano is great. The ending is kind of upbeat and hopeful: If there's no "work" as such, there's always "hobbies" (or whatever you could call it) - ways to feel AND BE useful and to better the world and the lives of others.
vineyardmike
11 hours ago
Great reading list! They’re honestly two stories that I reflect on constantly while thinking about AI lately.
Player Piano, not to spoil anything, is about a world run by engineers and machines. The machines are “optimal” and make every decision. How do people find purpose, and how should the engineers that build the machines view their role in society?
Manna is the story of two societies with competing visions of how AI (which ironically starts out strikingly similar to an LLM) interacts with welfare/universal basic income and post-scarcity society. For good measure, it also hypothesizes the end state of the internet panopticon and personalized “scores” and rates.
lproven
5 hours ago
> Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain
As it happens, I recently read Manna, and it is excellent and a good recommendation.
articlepan
12 hours ago
+1 to Player Piano, amazing book that could hardly meet the moment better.
idontwantthis
12 hours ago
It’s a good book but I didn’t agree that the big problem would be men lacking meaning because they didn’t have to work. They had families, homes and food. They could have devoted themselves to personal improvement, art, sports, their kids, whatever. I’d love to have security and no job. I’d be full to the brim with meaning and satisfaction.
smallmancontrov
12 hours ago
Yes, and while I'm sure the adjustment wouldn't be seamless (nothing worth doing ever is), anyone trying to hawk the "you need me, your master, to give you purpose!" line should be met with the highest order of immediate suspicion. The kid protagonists on the Cartoon Network wouldn't fall for that shit, I'm shocked by the number of grown adults who take the bait hook, line, and sinker without suspicion.
kouru225
12 hours ago
I agree, but the reaction to AI is making me realize that there are a whole bunch of people who don’t know how to find meaning in their lives
Eddy_Viscosity2
11 hours ago
They did find it though, and then AI took it away from them.
CamperBob2
9 hours ago
They thought they found it, but they didn't. Now the cognitive dissonance is kicking in, and their idea of therapy is to kick the nearest robot.
Eddy_Viscosity2
an hour ago
Bold of you to claim to know better what other people's sources of meaning are.
georgemcbay
12 hours ago
> I’d love to have security and no job. I’d be full to the brim with meaning and satisfaction.
Same. I have plenty of hobbies and could increase the amount of volunteer work I do substantially if I didn't have to work to stay fed and housed.
But I've also worked with plenty of people for whom their job and their overall identity are inexorably intertwined.
So while I don't see that issue as being a problem for me, it is likely to be a problem for a great number of people.
customguy
12 hours ago
> But I've also worked with plenty of people for whom their job and their overall identity are inexorably intertwined.
Is that an argument for or against jobs? Because one way to look at it is that they didn't develop a personality and identity at all, because they just attached themselves to a job. When that inevitably ends anyway, sooner or later, one way or another, a deep pit of nothing. That's one reason to rip the bandaid off right away.
But IMO even more importantly, how much room do people who do what the environment tells them, who let their job tell them who they are, have for inner dialogue? The worst things in the world were and are enabled by people "just doing their job", and if they have no identity outside of their job, there's someone just following orders waiting to happen. So from what would distress them, being rid of a crutch and an ear piece where a person would otherwise grow, follows that it is in their and all of our best interest to pay no mind to it.
Their new job will be to get a life and become a person. Maybe someone can print out some papers that make it look official, and they can get a monthly letter telling them they earned N personality dollars this month, good job, keep it up, thanks, company.
wbl
11 hours ago
Jobs are things people are willing to pay money to have done and thus are important to society. It's not surprising people find purpose in them.
customguy
an hour ago
I know what a job is, the problem is rather that you don't seem to know that "finding purpose in something" and "making it your identity" are completely different things.
tclancy
11 hours ago
Try to remember the time it was written in though. Now, male mental health is actually talked about and therapy is not seen as something shameful.
I mean, unless you’re trying to sell bootcamps to incels.
foxglacier
10 hours ago
Are you sure you would thrive without a job long term? I know it's very easy to feel that way when you're working because your pay is proof that you're doing something valuable, the requirement to do your job even when you don't feel like it ensures you don't fall into a spiral of laziness, and you don't have to face the inevitably worse reality of actually doing those things you want instead of just imagining them. What direction would you even go in and what force would continue to drive you even after your kids have grown up and there's nothing of value you can do for another human? Personal improvement in what direction? Be better at coping without external validation?
There are sayings like "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it" and "success breeds success". I have plenty of life experience that appears to confirm these in myself and others I know.
ctoth
10 hours ago
> what force would continue to drive you even after your kids have grown up and there's nothing of value you can do for another human?
Building things I'm interested in with and for people I care about. That might look like code or gardening or relationships or all sorts of things. There's so much to do. So many things to want to get out of bed for, and for the days when there aren't, slow cozy mornings are nice too.
Why do you suppose there will be nothing of value you can do for another human just because the machines are better/faster at most things? Just caring about someone without being programmed to will seem to become quite the most valuable thing?
Nursie
10 hours ago
Outside of work I am a hobby brewer, I have a lot of home maintenance that needs doing, and landscaping that uses up a lot of my time.
Give me stability and no job, I'm still going to be a busy person.
These things have value and satisfaction for me.
Nursie
10 hours ago
I don't think I've read Manna in about 20 years now, it was a gem to stumble across in the early 00s.
Now that I live in Australia, unfortunately I don't think that utopia will happen here when we have idiot politicians making up bullshit science off the cuff to justify rolling over and begging for AI datacentres - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jul/23/austr...
I mean seriously, wow.
Terr_
7 hours ago
I assumed that the author's Australia choice was not so much about politics but about the geographical mood, so that the Slightly-Better-Promise(d) Land could plausibly be an autarky with natural borders.
Nursie
4 hours ago
Yeah I'm sure you're right, it's just used as a "Meanwhile, somewhere with a different take on how this could all play out...."
TBH I was just looking for an excuse to share that link because the stupidity on display there has blown my mind.