"Technology changes. Human nature does not."

Sahaj Garg, co-founder & CTO of Wispr, recently shared his thoughts on The Displacement of Cognitive Labor and What Comes After. They’re worth a read. The crisis of meaning he talks about is something that worries me, especially at global scale. Then again, the tendency to associate identity with work is a 20th-century, North American thing. It’s a bubble I’m immersed in, and my creative background doesn’t help. Still, we’re going to see a lot of people with a lot of extra time on their hands. And chances are, I’ll end up among them. What I do definitely falls into the broad category of “cognitive labour”, so I’ve been thinking: what part of that would AI replace? Cognitive labour can be measured in terms of volume (how many projects), or impact (how successful the projects are). Garg’s vision seems rooted in the idea that AI can help a company making 1,000 widgets per month do so with 10 people instead of 50. That’s likely true, but why would the company do that when it could use…