Purpose, Pleasure, and Meaning in a World Without Work (with Nicholas Bostrom)

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🗓️ 20 May 2024

⏱️ 77 minutes

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Summary

If you didn't have to work to enjoy material abundance, would you do it anyway? If an algorithm or a pill could achieve better results, would you bother shopping or going to the gym? These are the kinds of questions we'll need to ask ourselves if AI makes all human labor and other traditional ways of spending time obsolete. Oxford philosopher Nicholas Bostrom, author of Deep Utopia, is downright bullish about our ability, not only to adjust to a life stripped of labor, but to thrive. Listen as Bostrom explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts what pleasure and leisure might look like in a world without struggle or pain, and why art and religion may come out still standing, or even become more necessary. Finally, they speak about how AI might free us up to be the best people we can be.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done
0:24.5	going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today is May 1st, 2024.
0:37.0	My guest is philosopher and author Nicholas Bostrom of Oxford University.
0:44.8	This is his second appearance on Econ Talk.
0:47.1	He was first here in December of 2014, talking about his book,
0:51.6	Super Intelligence,
0:53.0	about the dangers of artificial intelligence of AI,
0:56.0	and he was way early and worrying about that.
1:00.0	His new book, and our topic for today is deep utopia, life and meaning in a
1:06.8	solved world. Nick, welcome back to Econ Talk.
1:09.4	Thanks and there it is, yes, no, 2014, that's's it's been a while yeah and I'm a lot smarter since then I'm sure you are too but neither of us are quite super
1:19.1	intelligent but there's some things out there that are interesting but that's not our topic.
1:24.0	Our topic is your new book and I want to say before we start,
1:28.0	this is a wondrous book.
1:30.0	It is mind expanding, it is poetic. It is moving. It is funny. The writing is superb. Every page is full of ideas.
1:38.0	And it's about what you call Deep Utopia, the world we appear to be heading toward a world of
1:44.0	unimaginable material abundance robots AI able to do everything better than we do
1:49.6	which seems to lead to a world nearly if not literally infinite leisure.
1:57.0	And in such a world you ask among many things, what would become of us then?
2:02.0	What would give our lives meaning and purpose in a
2:06.4	solved world as you call it and what would we do all day and I think as as you point out, thinking about these issues forces us to think about non-utopian issues, the question of how we live our lives now and what is for many of us near utopia and for many not so close but let's start off by trying to say something very encouraging. I think many
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