2025-07-31
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But that wouldn't just create a crisis in the jobs market.
It would create a crisis of human meaning.
People get a lot of value out of their work because they feel this strong sense of contribution.
That is Amanda Askell, the philosopher in residence at Anthropic,
one of the AI companies that expects to be responsible for those job losses.
But, she argues, employment should not be the only way we measure our worth.
There's lots of people in society who can't contribute,
and we don't think of such people as worthless.
It would be awful for us to think that way.
So how should we think?
Imagine that human contribution was just required less.
Suppose that everyone gets a really great salary, but they aren't required to work.
And then there's this question of would they have this loss of a sense of self and purpose?
It's an interesting question,
especially for someone just returning to work after several months on maternity leave.
These kinds of questions are core to Anthropic's approach to developing AI.