Michael Nielsen Hails Asterisk Essay: After AI Takes All Work, Relationships Become Scarce
michael_nielsen · x · 2026-09-07
Patrick Collison recommended and Michael Nielsen endorsed Clara Collier's Asterisk essay After Work, We'll Have Each Other.
Key points:
- Once AI surpasses humans at all economically necessary labor, what remains is human relationships. Economist Alex Imas calls this the "relational sector"—humans will always supply the human touch.
- Access to relational jobs comes through relationships themselves: when everyone knows everything, who you know beats what you know.
- This is a return to pre-industrial views of labor: products were inseparable from their makers, transactions had social texture, and identity came from a densely interconnected social world rather than from work itself.
Nielsen calls it a striking synthesis of ethnographies of post-abundance societies, comparing it to Hesse's Glass Bead Game and noting monastic life shares similar character. The full essay also draws on research into power and sex among apes to ground its cultural argument.
Related event: Asterisk essay reimagines life after AI takes over work(4 posts)→
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