How do we find purpose when AI comes after our jobs?

Original Medium Post HERE

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Purpose lives in community. The East Boston Camps are just one of the places where East Boston Social Centers brought people together around purpose.

Three sources of purpose, and the essential, purposeful work of ensuring AI benefits us all

This post was not written by Chat GPT, but could it have been?

We have a crisis of purpose in the US. Deaths of despair have been climbing for at least two decades. Our national belief in the importance of meaningful work, and the myth that everyone can access the American dream if they just work hard enough, are particularly punishing for workers who lost manufacturing, mining and other jobs that used to provide a solid middle class lifestyle for their families — and haven’t been able to find any other jobs of the same quality.

The crisis in purpose is coming for many more of us. Whether or not enough good new jobs will be created to replace those we’ll lose, there will be huge displacement and change as computers can do more and more of the work of lawyers, bankers, and writers.

There was significant job creation at the same time that parts of the United States deindustrialized, but a purpose crisis struck in areas impacted by the loss of manufacturing jobs nonetheless. The people who thrived in the jobs that were lost often weren’t prepared for an easy transition to high-quality emerging jobs.

The purpose crisis goes beyond the challenge of finding meaningful work. Many of us feel unmoored in a time of declining trust, increasing loneliness, and decreased belief in American exceptionalism. I would argue our crisis of purpose is a direct contributor to the fraying of our democracy.

With the huge disruptions that are coming now — building on top of the unresolved impact of other labor market disruptions — we need a Marshall Plan for purpose.

The good news is there is much essential meaningful work ahead. Purposeful pursuits are all around us — ready to be seized.

We will want to weave purpose across domains in our lives — in work, but also in relationships, community, and society. If one of these legs of purpose falters, we’ll still have other legs to stand on.

1) We need to put work in its right place. Gen Z'ers are leading the way in recognizing work can be an important part of life, but shouldn’t be the only important thing.

We can find purpose in the work we are doing — and do that work better and happier. Helen Antenucci, an award-winning operator on the MBTA Blue line, welcomes us at Orient Heights T Stop in East Boston each day with a very warm, “Hello. It’s a wonderful day.” Because of her, I start my day smiling. We can all be that person — creating purpose beyond our basic job descriptions.

2) We must find purpose beyond work. We must help each other find more meaning in the relationships we have and in the relationships we create. We can start with making time to regularly check in with the people who mean the most to us (and those who could mean the most to us in the future); I aspire to do this half as well as my wife does.

3) We must pursue purpose in community and society. AI can’t replace human decisions about what is best for communities, nations, and the people in them. As just one important example, communities and societies (not AI) will need to determine how and where we want AI and other emerging technologies to be present in our lives and how to balance convenience and productivity against risks, privacy issues, and other concerns.

Humans must come together and do a better job supporting people whose jobs will be displaced by AI than we historically did supporting those whose manufacturing jobs were displaced (we also must do a better job supporting those still impacted by past job disruptions). We may need to make radical changes to our economic systems to provide financial support to people in times of massive job disruptions.

These are steps we can take today and beyond, but there is much much more to figure out and more to do — including determining how to raise our children for futures of meaning, purpose and success. More on that in a future post . . .

Stay joyful, Eastie!

This is a version of a Medium post, slightly edited. The full series, and other posts are at: https://medium.com/@justinpasquariello (this post was published in March 2023).

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