There’s a chance that some of the technologies that fit under the ever-enbroadening umbrella-term “AI” will end the world by vivifying a consciousness (or pseudo-consciousness) with goals that deviate from ours, which might then cause a spectacular economic collapse or spark a new, automated world war.

There’s also a chance it will lead to previously unseen levels of universal abundance, our species’ historical and persistent scarcity solved by minds (or mind-like systems) that determine exactly the right way to juggle resources so that everyone’s got what they need, and maybe quite a bit of what they want, too.

There’s also a chance that nothing serious happens and these tools are similar to all previous tools. They maybe herald a new personal technology paradigm, but don’t fundamentally change anything beyond the shape of the devices we covet and the specific interface through which we engage with information, entertainment, and each other.

That second what-if (the possibility of abundance) is especially interesting to me because while it would be a pretty cool outcome for most of us, it would also force us to ask ourselves who are when money (and overall economic value) is no longer the prime motive factor in our lives and a foundational element of our self-perception.

In an essay published in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes wrote, “There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. If the economic problem is solved, mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose.”

This maybe initially sounds a bit silly: of course I don’t dread the idea of plenty! If I didn’t have to work, my life would be full, my problems would go away, everything would be amazing!

There’s a reason so many people have trouble post-retirement, though. When we find ourselves setting our own paths, our own schedules, our own goals for the first time in our adult lives, it can be confusing and alarming. Many of us realize we don’t have internally derived versions of these things, so when we’re left without external instruction and motivation, we succumb to a sort of wandering listlessness and struggle under a weighty cloak of discontented ennui.

Who are we—as humans, as a species, as individuals—if we’re not working? If we don’t have careers (and career paths), if we no longer need to concern ourselves with money and the pursuit and aggregation and expenditure of it?

For all sorts of reasons, I tend to think putting everyone out of work (provided there’s a suitable safety net ready to catch us) is the ideal civilizational outcome.

I also believe it’s prudent we ask ourselves these sorts of questions ahead of time, before we desperately need to know the answers, as doing so provides directionality within the current paradigm, as well, pointing us toward our true ambitions even as economics tug at our compass needles and (to greater or lesser degrees) shape and filter our present pool of options.

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