Who else will go to work? You used to drink coffee in the morning, grab your bag and go to work. In the evening you complained about your boss, waited for Friday as salvation, and had an existential crisis on Sundays. Today? Your boss can be a chatbot, and your work can become a function in an API overnight. Welcome to a time when we are not only losing jobs, but also the sense of why we work at all.
We once feared that foreigners would replace us, then cheaper labor on another continent, and today we are (perhaps) being replaced by what we invented ourselves – algorithms that have no vacation, no sick leave, and no need for motivational speeches on Mondays. So – who will go to work anymore?
For a long time, service was more than just a source of income. She was a status, it was an identity, it was (if you were lucky) also something you loved to do. Ask your grandfather when he first took a vacation. He might tell you that it was only after retirement. And now? Generation Z wants to work four days a week – if they have to.
But now comes the reality where we may not work not even that much. Not because we don't want to. But because there won't be a need for it. Who will go to work anymore?
Bill Gates calmly says today that work is not a natural human need, but the result of historical scarcity. When a man who built an empire through work says this, the world stops for a moment. If a man who built the future now says that we will no longer work in it – what then?
This is not just a technological dilemma. This is a social upheaval.
And it is here, somewhere between optimism and loss of meaning, between automation and nostalgia for "real work", that the real content of this column begins.
When Bill Gates tells you you weren't made for work
No, this is not a motivational quote from TikTok. He stated this Bill Gates – a man who spent decades building a world where more is done, faster, and with as little human error as possible. And now he says: “We humans were not created to work."If this is said to you by a man who redefined the concept of productivity with his work ethic, you know something is up." it is no longer what it was.
Gates suggests that work is actually an “artifact of scarcity.” Work exists because the world didn’t have enough doctors, drivers, farmers, teachers. But if you now have a system that can program, diagnose cancer, teach math, and write wedding speeches—or anyone else—it’s not enough. must work? So – who else will go to work?
Or an even more brutal question: who will be valuable enoughthat there will be more you can worked?
Artificial intelligence doesn't work for us – it works instead of us
For the past few years, we have lived under the collective illusion that artificial intelligence will “augment our capabilities.” Nice PR. This is more true: AI is getting better at doing things we thought were our unique abilities.
Writing? Check.
Programming? Check.
Designing ads for Instagram, using a color palette that will trigger a serotonin surge in millennials? Double check.
Now imagine you're a graphic designer with ten years of experience. Every pixel of yours smells of aesthetics. But then someone comes along and writes in ChatGPT: "Create a retro-futuristic 80s-style ad visual with a Stranger Things font and a bit of cyberpunk". And the AI spits it out to him in 30 seconds.
No meeting. No moodboard. Without you.
The struggle between the “priceless” and the “exchangeable”
It's not about that anymore, What do you know?. It's about this, What do you know that artificial intelligence doesn't yet know – or doesn't know well enough?This means that those people who know how to:
- ask the right questions,
- connect the dots between technology and people,
- understand context, culture, empathy.
Everything else? Algorithm.
Once you had to know – today you must to have a reason for existing in the process.
“New jobs will come.” Really?
Every time someone mentions that artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs, a comforting voice from Silicon Valley comes out: “Every time a new technology came along, new jobs were created."Yes, but with an important addition: usually not for the same people.
Who is ready for this new reality?
Who knows what the job of the future will look like?
Will it be a "prompt engineer" who can squeeze better content out of ChatGPT than a 15-person team of copywriters?
Will this be an AI therapist that solves the ethical dilemmas of robots?
Or will it be a person who understands the culture – because artificial intelligence understands language, but does not yet understand the ironic distance of Slovenian passive-aggressive communication.
What about a society without work?
Let's stop for a moment and think: what does a society mean where 70 % people not working? Not because we don't want to, but because there's no need.
Who will give them meaning?
Who will give them income?
And what will a man do who has measured his worth through productivity his whole life?
Gates says we'll have more free time. Maybe. But free time is not happiness. Free time without structure, community, and the feeling that someone needs you—that can be hell in a comfortable armchair.
Personal AI as the new “me”
In the future, we will have our own personal artificial intelligences. Your AI will know your tastes, your habits, your thoughts. It will be your personal assistant, your creative partner, and – if you are really lonely – even your therapist and virtual partner.
The question is: if AI can give better advice, write better, and understand you better – Do you still need other people??
This is the point where technology no longer just intervenes in economics. This is the point where it begins to rewrite the human experience.
Last thought (still human for now)
You can be an optimist. You can be a techno-pessimist. Or you can be a realistic existentialist who understands that the world is changing radically and that the old answers no longer work.
The biggest mistake we can make now is not to not learn a new tool. The biggest mistake is to think we can continue to play the old game with new rules.
Perhaps a world is coming where work is no longer an obligation. But until then, it might be a good idea to consider:
Who are you when your work no longer defines you?
Jan Macarol
(A man who still types alone because he likes the smell of coffee and the slight frustration of deleting paragraphs)
