Borretti essay: automating drudgery also automates meaningful work — same complexity class
zetalyrae · x · 2026-08-21
Fernando Borretti (author of Antikythera) published an essay on the future trajectory of automation, questioning modernity's implicit promise that after a few hard centuries we'll reach a Star Trek future where all drudgery is automated and remaining work is meaningful.
Two core arguments: 1) "drudgery" and "meaningful work" are in the same complexity class — if a human can design a machine or procedure for a task, it is by definition drudgery, so technology that automates one automates the other (writing essays and life admin sit at similar human-level difficulty); 2) our revealed preference favors solipsistic convenience over human relationships.
He reviews 250 years of task-by-task automation: because automatable tasks are drudgery by definition, incentives to automate have made work safer and better-paid — but there is no "limit of drudgery" on the task-complexity axis, so AGI-level automation won't stop at the doorstep of meaningful work.
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