Future of Work with AI — Richard Golian

Machines eliminated the need for physical strength. AI may eliminate the need for mental effort. That is the idea that lodged itself in my mind and has not left since. We are entering an era where we may no longer need to know, understand, analyse or create solutions — at least not to survive. AI will do it for us. Most people will adopt mental passivity. A voluntary minority will maintain intellectual rigour — not from necessity, but from internal motivation. It is a strange feeling. I have not fully processed it yet. Most working-age people have never used a language model. AI remains a buzzword, not a tangible experience. The gap between surface-level awareness and deep understanding of what is coming is wider than most realise — and it is getting worse. But there is another reading. Every revolution — agricultural, industrial, digital — turned human work into something more mechanical. AI could reverse that. Not by replacing us, but by taking over the robotic parts of our jobs, freeing us to do what is actually human. These articles explore both possibilities — the unsettling and the hopeful — without pretending to know which one will prevail.