It AI-n’t Going to Work: Learning for the Future

In my blog last week (https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/back-to-the-future-with-blue-collar-work/), I laid the groundwork for the question: Is it still worth going to college? (If you haven’t read it yet, please do, so that you don’t react here by thinking I missed something). My answer – Yes, but….

There are two main economic scenarios regarding a future suffused in advanced AI software platforms and hardware AI robotics: either human intellectual skills will still be needed but only at a relatively high cognitive level, or there won’t be much of any work for humans to do at all. In both cases, going to college (or any other advanced learning program) is still going to be required, with a big caveat (I’ll get to that here soon enough).

Let’s start with the first scenario. Although AI already has a few advantages over humans that will only widen in the future – memory, knowledge base, logical thinking – it is doubtful that it will supersede us regarding elements such as empathy (fully understanding human nature in all its complexity), ethics (what is [un]acceptable depending on the context); above all, it lacks initiative. Not being “alive,” AI has no “drive” to do better or to determine what in society needs to be fixed or improved; it waits for our prompt, and then “does its thing.”

Moreover, when “prompted,” it might come up with a brilliant solution, or a disastrous one – the latter in large part due to ancillary damage. The immediate technical solution could be terrific, but the social cost immense. That’s not something the AI would be able to consider, unless guided by human input.

In addition (as I noted last week), history is replete with technological advances that revolutionized the economy, but for every newly unemployed worker a new type of job emerged out of that same novel technology (e.g., candlemakers out, electricians in). AI might follow the same path with new jobs necessitating working with technology instead of being replaced by it.

In such a scenario, higher education (universities, colleges, etc.) will have to adjust in four ways:

1- Novel courses to teach the new type of work. Most colleges are good at this (usually even better than universities, as they have to try harder to attract students).

2- Far more interdisciplinarity i.e., greater breadth of topics and less depth. This is harder for an institute of higher education to implement, given its traditional disciplinary “fiefdoms” (aka “departments”), jealous of their particular research interests. Nevertheless, there is some recent movement here in Israel. For instance, in the Technion (a top-flight institution of higher learning) the engineering students also study the humanities and social sciences.

3- Placing less emphasis on learning facts and focusing more on critical thinking, “critical” as in analytical, as well as adversarial (e.g., what could go wrong; is there a hidden “bug” in the solution). One would think that this is a basic function of such education, but in my close to 50 years of lecturing and mentoring experience, it really only begins to manifest itself at the M.A. and PhD level. Luckily, there’s something in Israel’s Jewish culture (A Stiff-Necked People…) that imbues a core of critical thinking in workers (e.g., 12% of the entire workforce is in high-tech).

4- Offering high level, later career, post-B.A. education. As the economy changes at an ever- faster pace, re-education becomes a must for mid-level workers to keep up with the latest developments (not all “technological”) or move sideways into new professions or job requirements (e.g., ethics supervisors of AI). Some Israeli institutions (e.g., the Weizmann Institute), already provide continuing education in data analytics, AI, and the like.

In short, college in the future (and present!) can’t be merely (or mostly) about preparing oneself for work. Rather, it’s about building resilience, encouraging curiosity, sharpening critical thought, developing creativity, and inculcating the fortitude to tackle whatever surprises the future holds.

But what if the surprise is the “end of work”? Here too higher education (actually, the entire educational system from kindergarten on up) has an important role to play. Simply put (and admittedly, also somewhat simplistically), assuming for the moment that economic livelihood (“money”) is not an issue for individuals – a huge issue that is currently being seriously discussed by policymakers around the world, but beyond my purview here – what would the average person do with him/herself over their entire adult lifetime if there’s no “economic work” to go to, or to perform?

Most people today would consider such a scenario to be a personal disaster: a boring, meaningless life. But such an attitude is merely a reflexive reaction to the human condition from time immemorial; however, in of itself “not working” is not a problem if we are prepared for it. Indeed, 150 years ago the average person worked 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, and close to 52 weeks a year. Today, we’re down to a mere 7-8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and about 46 weeks a year (including holidays). I don’t exactly see people crying over this huge loss in work time!

It would just mean readjusting our expectations regarding what life is all about: more self-fulfillment, more creativity, more socializing, more healthy physical activity, more… However, for truly exploiting all that “more,” we need to be re-educated: better health habits, greater creative expression, improved interpersonal communication skills – the list goes on and on. And that’s where all levels of education (especially college) will have to make their greatest adjustment.

A final thought: all this “fully human self-expression” will be easier in a world of AI as our aide and implementer. The Bible (Genesis) had a good term for this (albeit male chauvinistic in the context of Eve and Adam): Ezer Ke’negdo, a helpmate. Whether AI merely changes our place in the workforce or replaces us, with the right “educational” preparation humanity can flourish – even more than in the past. To add one word to this post’s title: It AI-n’t about (Going) to Work. Rather, it’s all about learning to live meaningfully without work.

[Regarding how Israeli young adults and its retiree generation view AI regarding issues beyond “work,” a very recent scholarly article explores just that. Its title: AI perceptions across technological generations: Utopian and dystopian views uniting baby boomers and gen Z in Israel (https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2025.2542791)]