utopIA or dystopIA?

I

(During a late-night conversation with friends…).

“AI will steal all our occupations... I could not live without my job.”

My alarms went off. How dangerous is that statement! What does "working to make a living" really mean for us?

Once home, still fixated on my friend’s strong declaration, I searched for the definition of "job" in various Western reference dictionaries. Here is one example, representative of them all:

Oxford Dictionary:

Job, (noun): A paid position of regular employment, a post, a situation; an occupation, a profession.

Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Earthly Paradise with the Fall of Adam and Eve, c. 1615.

II

utopIA or dystopIA?

In a random AI-dominated utopia which by no means intends to predict the future of our society - in which current trends foresee a practically nonexistent public sector and far from disappearing inequalities - decades had passed since the workday had been gradually reduced to the point of extinguishing human labor. AI had evolved to levels where it could perform all known productive tasks, and it did so with impeccable efficiency.

The garden was brimming with abundance. Social and ethnic inequalities were already a distant concept. All healthcare, food, and educational resources were public, and private property existed only to preserve civilians' privacy. Days, once full of urgencies and fatigue, now stretched like a motionless sea, with neither beginning nor end.

Flawlessness had delivered on its prophecy. Yet, the air was thick with a strange languor. AI, too perfect for human imperfection, had not understood the rules of the game.

At the center of the garden, the fruits, irresistibly beautiful and captivating, were displayed with an almost unsettling allure, the very embodiment of desire. As if hypnotized (but fully aware of the consequences it would bring), the woman bit one. She gave some to her husband, who ate as well. Emboldened by the newfound sense of fulfillment she felt, she gathered as many fruits as she could and distributed them among her friends and neighbors. Grateful, they began to sew her dresses, make her handcrafted gifts, and offer her favors. A woman with agile hands sewed her an outfit so beautiful and detailed that she soon wanted to make more for her nephews and her neighbors’ grandchildren. This generated an apparently irrational chain in which the citizens of paradise began helping one another without relying on machines.

What began as a discrete act quickly grew. Soon, the new market, born on the margins of the automated system, became more real than the system itself and ultimately eclipsed it completely.

Gustav Klimt, Adam and Eve, 1917.

III

The fatum, for better or worse, is inevitable. Humans do not live solely on efficiency and comfort; they thrive on stories, relationships, and purpose. With the advent of AI, we must reconsider the meaning of job—and, with it, the notions of value and contribution as well as our relationship with technology and human interdependence. This rethinking is not merely an intellectual exercise but a path to reconcile ourselves with the cosmos and our place within it.

In which category do care work, community activism, artistic creation, or social support fall? With the AI revolution, we have the chance to give value to otherwise undervalued and taken-for-granted sectors in society, and with it, show appreciation for the demographics usually engaged in these jobs who often face social or systemic marginalization. 

A new social contract is not just economic or political; it must also be cultural. Its reformulation demands a vision of the society where technology complements, rather than replaces, human effort—enhancing creativity, fostering community, and cultivating purpose in ways that resonate with the complexity and beauty of human existence.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Left panel: The Garden of Eden.