Work and life
1. Last Monday, in a debate on "The Future of Work and the Meaning of Life" at the European School of Humanities, Sara Berbel emphasized the importance of recognizing and dignifying work as a fundamental element of society, and the need to address technological changes from this perspective, changes that are often seen as a threat to a collective threat. If significant breaches have already opened in the logic of work culture in recent times, the instruments of knowledge advancement are now dizzying. And in this sense, AI, the great myth in full swing, generates great anxieties.
Jordi Alberich warned of the danger of a collective crisis through exacerbated individualism. Work has played a central role in the industrial era as a means of personal fulfillment, recognition, and identity construction. The concept of the working class acquired a structural dimension in 20th-century societies, playing a decisive role when the world transformed from industrial and national capitalism to financial and digital capitalism. And in the mutations of both Soviet-type systems, with their new authoritarian tendencies, and liberal democracies, on the path toward post-democratic authoritarianism, work has become blurred as an element of social cohesion and articulation. So, although it may seem contradictory, on the one hand, individualistic impulses are growing, and on the other, so are the threats to work as a means of human fulfillment.
2. On the one hand, the factory, the company, the office, the meeting places, are losing their identity, their referential value, and their sense of community. More and more people—and this is just the beginning—are working from home. The idea of online work as a form of redemption is beginning to raise doubts: it fosters autonomy, but at the same time, it represents a labor invasion of private space, and therefore, confusion; and digitalization is a means of destroying work activity, due to its capacity to replace some of the functions of workers. Work feels constrained, and consequently, so does the individual. And a change I had envisioned as a liberating factor can end up being an instrument of subjugation. Meeting at work was part of the working condition: can screen-based communication truly replace face-to-face interaction? Perhaps there was some haste in thinking that this diffusion of the workplace made us freer, and now, like all change, it generates doubts. And it introduces factors of insecurity, which are exacerbated by new technological advances.
However, the issue is artificial intelligence. Its capacity fascinates and frightens at the same time. From their origin, in the hands of humankind, all technologies have a dual nature: they can serve for the best and the worst. A knife can be used to cut bread, but also to kill an enemy. And this principle applies to all technologies and is amplified by their enormous potential. AI can advance our knowledge in extraordinary ways, but it can also be a factor of oppression in the hands of certain powers, and it can threaten the human condition. It will never possess the desire, the sensitivity, the bodily impulses that each of us possesses, and which are what make us unique. But, with its immense capacity for combining data, it can eventually supplant us, facilitating the control of everyone by a few, as is already often suggested, and it can create monsters. Trump is the delusion of the last man. Of those who believe that everything is permitted to them and that they have no limits. The next one will be AI (or it will hide behind it).
3. In any case, work has been an expression of the human way of being in the world: marking our identity and condition. Its evolution will be decisive in shaping new societies. It must be one of the key issues of the near future. And we must face it without fear, but with an awareness of what is coming. The employer-employee relationship has structured modern societies. How can we face the mutations of the world of work with critical awareness, that is, by prioritizing the recognition of the human condition? The fantasy of liberation from work could lead us to even greater subjugation. The struggle for freedom will never end—it is a condition of our being—except through widespread capitulation. Totalitarianism is always lurking.
