> "What if it dramatically reduces the cost of creating, learning, building, coordinating, and solving problems?"

The costs savings are not by any chance gonna benefit the average Joe, that's not how the world has worked so far, why would it be any different with AI? Not even when life itself it's at stake, just look at the healthcare industry in the US.

The cost savings will go to the pockets with the most infrastructure to get the most tokens, the owners of the hardware that can make the most economical profit with those tokens, it's extremely naive to believe the benefits will be proportionally shared among the new unemployed rather than shared between of the owners of these industries

The only way the future "could work out" is if people get together and force it to work out, force a way to make the benefits of AI benefit everyone not just the owners, but that's very unlike to happen.

> People quickly assume that if jobs disappear, purpose disappears too. As if jobs were the only legitimate way to contribute to society or create meaning. In this article, I argued that we may need to expand our definition of work beyond the narrow container of a job. Care work, relationships, health, learning, creativity, community building, contribution - these have always been essential forms of work. Perhaps the future is about rediscovering all the forms of work we have systematically undervalued.

Only a few get to not only imagine a better future, but to create one. Yes, programming may have moved one step higher, something I have always wanted, but those who have the money and muscle to steer this ship are steering it in the direction of massive centralization and surveillance, the monsters that ate the internet.

I still believe, along with Kevin Kelley, and previously with Ted Nelson (Computer Lib/Dream Machines) that technology WANTS to liberate and empower people. I built computers from S-100 boards with thousands of parts, based on that belief.

Look at the dream envisioned above.

Care work, relationships, health, learning, creativity, community building, contribution

These are all under all-out assault from the forces bought by oligarchs to enslave people to their "company stores" instead.

It's OUR choice whether to further this slave state or to buck it; whether to help people adapt and grow or restore individual and group opportunity, access to education, unvarnished facts, health care and more, or to simply ban them as "communist". You know that's exactly the plan. If it doesn't benefit the mega-wealthy it's "communist." and due to the current popularity of un-thinking, a lot of people swallow that bait.

I carved out a nice career in optical and electronic engineering, aerospace, computer sales, support and system design, without a single course in optics, electronics, computing (there WERE no courses) or systems engineering. Not everyone can do that on their own, but those were the "communist" days when a person or small company could be creative and make exciting and liberating things (like Linux, for example) and not be just crushed in some insane land grab for a still-imaginary frontier.

There are real problems to solve, and rather than solve them, we are creating new ones on a massive scale.

The science fiction writers were right. We fix this mess or create a burned out rock for a planet.

The writer sells career transition from traditional career to portfolio careers (I don't know what that means). Of course, it will work out for her consulting business, unlikely it will work out for most people.