Pinchbeck argues that the most useful text for thinking about artificial general intelligence is not by a futurist but by Oscar Wilde: his 1891 essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Wilde imagined machinery absorbing monotonous labor so that everyone, not only a minority with inherited wealth and leisure, could develop their individuality, and treated cultivated leisure rather than work as the proper end of human life. Pinchbeck sets this against statements by Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic that AGI is two to four years away, to be followed by AI-augmented robotics displacing manual labor. He restates Wilde's fork between industrial tyranny and a society that converts private property into public wealth, and proposes redirecting freed labor toward ecological repair, permaculture and renewable energy.
In brief
- Pinchbeck contends that Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism anticipates the political stakes of automation more usefully than contemporary technology writing.
- Wilde argued that machinery should do all monotonous and unpleasant work, and that cultivated leisure rather than labor is the proper aim of human life.
- Pinchbeck cites Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic as saying AGI capable of eliminating most cognitive labor is two to four years away.
- Pinchbeck argues that historically only the wealthy had the time and resources to develop their creative capacities, and that automation could extend that condition to everyone.
- He warns that AGI concentrated in dictatorships and corporate monopolies could produce indefinitely stable despotism, the outcome Wilde named as the alternative to liberation.
- Pinchbeck proposes retraining people freed from economic drudgery for ecological work: replenishing ecosystems, large-scale permaculture and aquaculture, and a shift to renewable energy.
Full text
hey everybody as many of you know we're approaching this incredible precipice of artificial general intelligence or AGI and this is a transformation that could remake Human Society in very profound ways so for me surprisingly the most important book for understanding this moment wasn't written by a futurist or technologist it was written by Oscar wild back in 1891 so let me try to explain why that's the case uh most people know Oscar Wild for the Portrait of Dorian Gray or his plays or his witticisms he also wrote this one incredible political essay the soul of man under socialism and it offers a vision that is like incredibly preent for where we are now in that book Wild discussed the idea of utopia and he wrote uh a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing and when Humanity lands there it looks out and seeing a better country set sail progress is the realization of Utopias so wild imagined a distant future where technology and automation eliminate drudgery fundamentally transforming work itself in his vision this Liberation would allow everybody not just a privileged few or tiny Elite to cultivate their individuality and their creative potential and to do this we would shift away from a focus on corporate control of resources and private wealth to a more kind of a collaborative um Cooperative Society now leaders like Sam Alman of open Ai and Dario omoi of anthropic now say we're about two to four years away from AGI and once again this is a system that could eliminate most forms of cognitive labor and then it would be followed by AI augmented robotic robotics which will do away with most forms of manual labor and we can also see already see these humanoid robots that are becoming more and more dextrous more and more powerful and so on and so wild with Incredible foresight realize that such technological Revolution would lead to one of only two possible future outcomes so either you would have industrial tyranny on an incredible scale or you would have a liberated society that converts private property into public wealth and replaces competition with cooperation where we are today most of us really have a lot of fear or even Terror about losing our livelihoods in this comp comptitive economic system that ties our survival to our work but wild recognized that under a different economic Arrangement this same technological development could actually free humanity and he noted that throughout history artistic Pursuits were largely limited to those with inherited wealth and Leisure Time only the very privileged few had the time and the resources they needed to truly like cultivate their unique gifts and their unique Essence uh so in a future where we were all liberated from drudgery everybody would have the same opportunity for creative self-development and this doesn't mean that everybody would be an artist some people may concentrate on love on family relationships on spiritual inquiry or they might just you know lie on the bank of a river contemplating you know clouds crystals and flowers and so on uh so for wild he talked about you know cultivated Leisure as actually the desired end state for Humanity and actually I do not think our lives would be meaning without work in fact they'd be far more meaningful and purposeful offering us many new opportunities and also when we consider the ecological crisis we're facing right now as a species uh if we liberated people from this sort of meaningless drudgery we could retrain people to help you know do the work that needs to get done to heal the planet such as replenishing ecosystems saving threatened species and so on we could undertake large scale permaculture and aquaculture projects and we could you know engineer a massive shift to renewable energy wild wrote um up to the present man has been to a certain extent the slave of machinery and you have a system where you know one man owns the machines and makes the benefit of the 500 people working for him I me it's very inequitable as we're seeing now were that machine the property of all everybody would benefit all unintellectual unintellectual labor all monotonous dull labor must be done by Machinery at present machines compete against man under proper conditions Machinery will serve man while Humanity will be amusing itself or enjoying cultivated Le Leisure which and not labor is the aim of man Machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work so I think that's a wonderful vision and it's amazing that this this Vision that wild had is actually now within our Gras like we could have a post-work society you know and then focus on the ecological crisis and you know development and so on but unfortunately we're facing this very critical threshold you know AGI in the hands of dictatorships and corporate monopolies you know could lead to infinitely stable dictatorships or this kind of horrifying despotism that wild warned us against so I think at this point the question is not whether this kind of transformation is coming the question is whether we will shape AI to support Collective human flourishing or will we allow it to shape us towards something much darker and sort of desolate in a way to me this almost feels like a final battle like Lord of the Rings or something and one that we all need to be part of so this is the question will AI be used to further uh you know will we allow it say say to be used to further consolidate wealth and power with a small Elite owning the machines and the systems while the rest of us are made obsolete or turned into like you know data surfs in a techn feudalist kind of nightmare or can we use AI to abolish scarcity make life itself an artistic Pursuit and Free People from economic servitude so everybody has the opportunity to develop their unique gifts and their unique selves so really that's where we're at and that's the choice right now the choice is ours
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.