On work – Jane Humphries & Ben Schneider in TLS:

‘This possible future is double-sided: on the one hand, people will hardly need to work; on the other, there will be few jobs and sources of income. To cope, an influential group of automation theorists from both the Right and Left have proposed a Universal Basic Income (UBI) that would give citizens a state stipend independent of employment.
Both Roger Bootle, in The AI Economy, and Aaron Benanav, in Automation and the Future of Work, are sceptical of the more dramatic visions of an automated future. Neither thinks that a wave of job- destroying technology is pounding on our door, and both doubt the value of a UBI. They disagree about how we can use AI to shape a better future. Bootle’s new world simply tweaks our present, taking advantage of new technology to increase leisure and reform education. Benanav aims to construct a more equal society in which work is more meaningful.’

(…)

‘While Bootle rehearses known responses, Benanav is iconoclastic. Automation and the Future of Work is not really about AI’s progress and likely consequences. Instead, it focuses on the growth of precarious jobs and low pay, before shifting to a description of how to organize a world without want. The author begins with an overview of “automation discourse”. Silicon Valley titans, politicians, techno-futurists and social critics agree that we are living in an era of rapid technological change that will end work as we know it. Despite this growing consensus, Benanav shares Bootle’s scepticism about the potential of automation. He denies that AI and robots are responsible for the disappearance of “good” jobs, pointing instead to deeper-seated problems in capitalism, specifically an inherent tendency to stagnation. What he finds valuable are visions of a “post-scarcity” world where work, or at least work as we know it, is no longer necessary. He describes how an entirely reorganized society using our current level of technology could provide material comfort, dignity and personal fulfilment for all. He warns that unless workers take power from the current owners of capital, however, this world will be highly unequal, condemning the vast majority to insecurity.’

(…)

‘Bootle’s answer is to pump up aggregate demand and encourage workers to move to expanding sectors, becoming housekeepers, care workers, or wedding planners – recommendations that looked quirky even before Covid-19 hit. Benanav agrees with the theorists that the narrowing gap between productivity growth and output growth underlies a falling demand for labour, which we experience as higher than usual peaks of unemployment during recessions, jobless recoveries, a falling share of national income among workers, and various types of underemployment. But he denies that this is the result of rising productivity. In the Golden Age that followed the Second World War, productivity grew rapidly and so did output, producing prosperity in Western Europe, Japan and the US. Since the 1970s, however, rates of productivity growth have fallen – the opposite of what we would expect if rapidly advancing technology was replacing workers – as has overall growth. In Benanav’s account, it is the reduction in overall growth, variously described as “Japanification” or “secular stagnation”, that is to blame for the low labour demand that eliminates good jobs.’

(…)

‘His goals include “human dignity” and the freedom to pursue individual passions. In his utopia there will still be “necessary work”, such as in the fields of healthcare, food production and education, but individuals will only be expected to work for a few hours per day on a necessary activity of their choosing. The resources for people to pursue their interests would be distributed through voluntary, democratic organizations. This all sounds wonderful, but the internal organization of his utopia is implausible, involving committees, working groups and discussion forums. And to reach this transformed world requires overthrowing the power of “asset-owners”. We are left to ponder political action of an ominously different kind.
The failure of these two books to offer clear and convincing strategies to cope with AI is common to the genre. Authors on the future of work tend either, like Bootle, to offer off-the-shelf and out-of-date policy solutions, or, like Benanav, to suggest an idealized endpoint but with no clear roadmap of the way ahead, leaving readers unsure how we will cope with AI, let alone harness it to achieve a fair future of work.’

Read the review here.

Once again the answer is moderation, at least according to Humphries and Schneider.
Dignity and work are not an easy combination. Yes, the employer should not tell you: “You go too often to the loo, brother,’ but is guarding prisoners dignified work, to name just one example.
The service industry might not be the solution to most problems related to robotization. On the other hand, pooh-poohing the service industry altogether is farfetched.
There is a bright future for human wedding planners and manicurists and masseurs. How dignified this work will be depend also on their clients.
And why should a wedding planner be more hesitant about the meaning of his work than a high-paid manager working for an international bank in London, Frankfurt or New York?