What will you do when the robots come for your job?

In a recent interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, Elon Musk gives his expectation for the next 10 years—”I’ve said many times I think work is going to be optional,” like gardening. You can grow your own tomatoes as a hobby which is “a nice touch,” or you can buy the ideal tomato in the store. Musk thinks all work will be like that—possibly interesting for some people that want to stay busy, but unnecessary for all. Computers already became better than us at playing chess and writing some kinds of software. In the next decade, AI and the accompanying physical robots will eventually surpass us on all kinds of work, “and that applies to everything—everything, everything.” We are, he believes, on the threshold of an age of mass consumption in which money will no longer be valuable or needed.

I suggest that Christians have a better framework for understanding AI and work.

God made humans to work. They always will.

God made us to work, and it’s a good thing. This is why Ecclesiastes speaks of work as a privilege and blessing—”do your work with a merry heart.” (Eccl. 9:7) It’s also why work is not purgatory to be escaped while waiting for the weekend or retirement, but a privilege to be embraced and carried out joyfully in the presence of God.

The standard for all work and for wise work in particular is God Himself (Gen 2:2; John 5:17; Heb. 4:4–5). It follows that His image bearers are also made to work. Even in our fallen, struggling frame, we can’t not work—we always invest ourselves in something.

We will never out-innovate the curse.

But of course work is also hard and often frustrating. Evolution explains the struggle with biological limits and supposes that evolution hasn’t quite gone far enough yet. The biblical understanding is that work is hard because of Adam’s sin and the curse that followed it.

The evolutionary explanation for why we struggle with work offers a technological solution. The theological explanation has only one solution—the return of Jesus Christ to rule over a restored creation, making all things good. AI is not that saviour.

And so Christians grounded in a theology of work confidently affirm that the core nature and essence of work continues unabated.

Nothing Important has Changed

Luckily we don’t have to look far for precedents for both tech-optimism and despair. The Economy of Abundance written in 1934, collected both inflated expectations of 15-hour workweeks and proclaims that the age of abundance had arrived (see ch. 2). Speaking of the coming “new-found bounty” from mechanization in the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes (Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren) worried about how to keep society occupied when the need to work faded away. Optimistically, he hoped that “a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while.”

We are the grandchildren of John Maynard Keynes. His future has arrived. The average length of work weeks in North America has gone up, not down.

A wiser counsellor spoke to this question, long before the 1930s. “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has been already in the ages before us” (Eccl 1:9–10).

From time to time, new technologies help humans dress up in different costumes and pretend to have changed something about the world. But all of the most important aspects of the human experience continue as they always were—birth, aging death, love, joy, sorrow, struggle, desire, fulfillment… and yes, work and rest. Nothing truly important about the human experience has changed.

AI is a tool. Wise humans learn to use it well.

This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to warn everyone that tools have a bent to them and we ought to be wary of what they are doing to us. I’m not writing that part of the article. To begin, it has never been clear to me what exactly that would mean. How do I use AI warily and how will it be done differently than what I’m already doing? Does this just mean I show up later than every one else? Second, I’m concerned that this leads us to expect different rules somehow for using AI, as though it contains something particularly corrosive or even demonic as compared, for instance, to hammers, curling irons or automatic transmissions.

In its place, I’ll propose a simpler framework. AI is just part of the world. It’s another thing. Follow the same rules and ethical guidelines you always used. Nothing interesting to see here. Onward. Or said somewhat less provocatively, the Bible already gave us sufficient guidelines for handling AI and we always have. I’ll list a few that come to mind:

• AI is not a final authority on truth; it is not even a consistently dependable guide on wisdom. Only God is. (Eccl. 5:2, 7; Job 28)
• Choose your prompts, choose your life. Proverbs has much to say about competing wise and foolish counsellors (Psalm 1; Prov 6–9). People typically choose counsellors that fit with their own wisdom trajectories (2 Tim. 4:3–4; Prov. 1:20–33). Think of AI as a very articulate and clever but completely spineless counsellor. Ask it for wisdom or folly and it will give you the very best arguments for the ideas you want to hear. But all of that was already readily available in the marketplace of ideas.
• Learning to use good tools skillfully is an expression of wisdom (Eccl. 10:10; Isa. 28:24–29). A wise person clears trees with an axe or a chainsaw, not a pocket knife. AI upgrades the human in the equation, by clearing the fiddly work so that we can focus on the core decisions.
• But use your tools ethically. Don’t lie (Exod. 20:16; Col. 3:9) by acting like you put mental energy behind something you didn’t write. Love your neighbour (Lev 19:18; Mark 12:31; Rom 13:9) by caring enough to read through things you send them. Choose discretion (Phil. 1:9–10) by doubting yourself and carefully pursuing truth from an infallible source.

Conclusion

A theology of work would be incomplete without the end to the story. AI has all of our attention because tasks that were once unattainable are now instantaneous. Depending on your temperament AI either delights or alarms you. It feels either magical or demonic.

But we have set our hopes too low. Set before the transformation that Jesus will bring, AI is a crude tool and nothing close to world-transforming. Likewise, ours is a far greater hope than having all the stuff we could want without working for it. We hope for the resurrection, the new heavens and the new earth where righteousness dwells, and the coming of the King who will make all of it good again.