How technological change disrupts work, identity, and meaning — a historical view
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-10-24
- Economist Soumitra Shukla and @alexolegimas publish a new Substack essay on how technological change, especially AI, disrupts the link between work and identity.
- Core argument: work has never been just income minus effort cost as in economic models — identity, meaning, and sense of agency are all wrapped up in what people do for a living.
- The piece engages Ezra Klein's column on his mathematician father losing meaning in mathematics and Fukuyama on AI, agency, and recognition, taking a historical view — from 20th-century management theory stripping planning from workers — to frame the AI-era meaning-of-work crisis.
More from AGI Musings
- Finding Vulnerabilities Is the Point: Debating AI Cyber Offense and Defense — teortaxesTex · 2026-10-24
- Security veteran asks: where would $1B and unlimited frontier-model tokens dent cybersecurity in 6-12 months? — chrisrohlf · 2026-10-24
- 'AI slop' is just the automation line moving: from C++ to Unity to AI, argues veteran dev — FanaHOVA · 2026-10-24
- Re-reading Anthropic's 2021 plan: 'principle of least action'-coded — akbirthko · 2026-10-24
- Anil Seth blasts Tavos Griffin's video Turing test claim: creating fake people is a terrible idea — round · 2026-10-24
- EvalResearchBench tests whether AI agents can build their own evaluators for recursive self-improvement — AG2AI · 2026-10-24