Kindergarten teachers push back: relational jobs in the AI age aren't meaningless
binarybits · x · 2026-09-10
binarybits shares Clara Collier's Asterisk essay "After Work, We'll Have Each Other," which builds on economist Alex Imas's idea that once AI handles all economically necessary labor, humans will be left supplying "the relational sector" — the human touch machines can't replace. Collier argues this amounts to a return to pre-industrial labor culture, when work itself wasn't seen as a source of dignity and identity came from dense social ties instead.
binarybits agrees with much of the essay but rejects its premise that relational jobs are meaningless or undignified. His counterexample: public school kindergarten teachers — intensely relational, unlikely to be automated, yet both dignified and meaningful.
Related event: Relational Work Retains Meaning and Dignity in the AI Era(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- AI safety frontier shifting from neural nets to mechanistic swarm interpretability — Hidenori8Tanaka · 2026-09-10
- Researcher leaves Google DeepMind for METR, puts AI takeover odds above 20% — sjgadler · 2026-09-10
- Tech companies will resemble hedge funds: tiny teams with AI agent leverage — brucemacv · 2026-09-10
- "If I claimed a 10% chance of killing people, the FBI would arrest me": AI safety jab goes viral — DavidSKrueger · 2026-09-10
- Be Grigori Perelman: the viral thread contrasting his refusal machine with AI agents chasing prizes — MrIvanAM · 2026-09-10
- Why now is the best time ever to found an AI safety startup, from alignment to governance — luke_drago_ · 2026-09-10