this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
-40 points (33.1% liked)

Technology

77090 readers
2848 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

That's possible.

That being said, John Maynard Keynes also made a similar prediction:

NPR Planet Money:

The economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote an essay titled "Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren." It was 1930. And in the essay, he made a startling prediction. Keynes figured that by the time his children had grown up, basically now, people might be working just 15 hours a week.

The specific quote:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes

For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!

"Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" (1930); appeared in the Nation and Athenaeum (1930)

Basically, had we decided to leave our standard of living where it was in 1930, we could have worked two days a week. But...that's not generally what people wanted to do. We wanted to take advantage of new stuff that people produced to appeal to us, jack up our standard of living.

In the past, we've always managed to come up with new, appealing things that wind up making use of that new productive capacity. Climate control or anime video games or more space per person in housing.

Is it possible that in the future, we will be unable to make use of scarce human labor to provide something that humans want? Maybe! And that's something to think about. But simply the fact that human labor is finite, that things that involve human labor can be used like a status symbol, might itself fill the problem. We shall see.

One thing that I do agree with is that transition from the world of today to a world with AGI is going to be a very disruptive transition.

[โ€“] individual@toast.ooo 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

OK but Maynard James Keenan said that some say we'll see Armageddon soon; certainly hope we will. I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maynard_James_Keenan

load more comments (1 replies)