If I can swing it, I usually like to take the last two weeks of the year off from work. Not much happens during that time, I’m already running low on gas, and I’ve pitched a tent in the camp that suggests you should just totally unplug instead of coasting during the quiet period and hoarding your PTO days for a later date. Neither camp is wrong, but I do wonder how many people in the other one are actually saving that paid free time for a concrete purpose. For those that aren’t, much as I question my own use of “free” “time,” I have to ask: in an ideal world, what is it actually for?
Since humans first took their leave from the evolutionary path of apes—Yuval Noah Harari, please keep me honest here—advances in technology have always served as the catapults that sent us to ever greater heights. Personally, I don’t think nearly as much about fire or the wheel as I do the Internet, but I suppose technology is technology. We might be on a steeper part of the curve today than we were thousands of years ago, but the inflection points more or less have the same effect: they open up previously unknown possibilities. They allow us to organize and communicate more efficiently. They allow us to trade difficult, time-consuming tasks in for longer periods of leisure.
Technology: the great time-saver! In the year 2023, I don’t have to waste a minute remembering anything. I employ at least two note-taking apps and one app literally named Reminders to serve as an extension of my brain. I don’t need to ask friends or acquaintances or strangers for information, because I can use Google Search to access all the world’s public knowledge in a few measly seconds. Not sure how to get somewhere? Google Maps. Want to catch up with people that don’t live in my immediate location? Meta’s family of apps. Need groceries or a guaranteed solid dinner out? Instacart or Yelp. A fancy rental or a ride somewhere? Airbnb or Uber. Any physical good I could possibly imagine? Amazon.
You get the point. And listing off the different services available to us with the tap of a smartphone screen isn’t in and of itself an interesting or revolutionary insight. I guess I’m just interested in the emerging technologies that will steepen—already are steepening—that aforementioned curve of progress. If legislation ever allows for it, what will a world filled with self-driving cars look like? As for AI more broadly, forget the glacial speed of legislation—ChatGPT and the march of LLM-powered consumer experiences are very much upon us. I’ve recently started working full-time on generative AI at Meta, and let me tell you. We’re full speed ahead. AI assistants can help you write, they can get you information even quicker than search, they can even fill your need for love and companionship. They’re prone to hallucination and probably shouldn’t do your taxes quite yet, but the technology is rapidly improving and AGI (artificial general intelligence) seems right around the corner. Imagine all the freedom it’ll provide us from menial, miserable busywork when it inevitably appears. Just imagine!
Setting aside the non-zero chance that humans will go extinct at the hands of sophisticated AI, again I return to the question of free time. Technology supposedly makes us more efficient and productive, but despite optimistic takes on where we could go like Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists, a 15-hour standard work week still feels ludicrous and unattainable. In western society, is this primarily because capitalism demands and rewards nonstop hustle, inside or outside of the law? Or is it because most of us wouldn’t know what the hell to do with an additional 25 hours of leisure time per week? Is it both?
Think about it: if in the not-so-distant future, you can get anything you possibly need from your face computer with a quick whisper, what will you do as you wear it in the back of a self-driving car on your way to a couple of hours at your heavily AI-assisted job? How much of your free time today is already spent staring at your phone? I don’t mean to be high and mighty here—I’m just as much a slave to mine as most of us. Even if I try to replace the Instagrams and TikToks with chess and mediation apps, my daily screen hours don’t really go down. And what is it that we would do if we were able to resist the vortex of the modern attention economy?
Personally, I like to think I would spend more time present with family and friends. I would write more. I would go on hikes and treks and walks in the park. I would live in the “real world,” whatever that means. And then I’d be frustrated and disheartened to realize that the stolen glances at my phone, everything on my laptop that prevents me from entering a writing flow state, a million notifications from all my devices—they’d add up to an embarrassingly large chunk of that extra stretch of leisure time. To be clear, I really and truly want that additional time. I bet you do too. I’m just not so sure we collectively have what it takes to use it wisely.
So on that positive note and coded nudge for some 2024 resolutions…happy holidays!
Thanks for another excellent entry Victor. You’ve raised some thought provoking questions. Will/can we create time through time saving technology? Have we in the past and will AI be different? Can technology provide us with is a sense of how to make the best use of time we save through the use of technology? Does it really need to? Will we expect it to?
I am reminded of a quote I read recently: All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone," (French philosopher Blaise Pascal). You won’t be surprised to learn that I think this is true. I certainly don’t think that all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to develop and use AI, but hey it’s coming so let’s figure it out.