We Will All Soon Be Playwrights

It used to be that when someone couldn’t cut it in the competitive or creative world, they’d simply drop out or start drinking. These were the easiest ways to dull the sting of their own mediocrity. Others salvaged their pride by claiming that, in a world this chaotic, success itself was impossible—and probably overrated anyway. Voilà: failure, conveniently rebranded as virtue. (That’s me.)

Today, instead of staggering into a bar to drown their disappointments, many people choose other ways to distract themselves. Some artists conceal their lack of talent by producing political work where the topic takes precedence over the technique. Many STEM majors slip into so-called power professions—becoming professors, managers, or CEOs—and spend their lives wrapped in the comforting illusion of importance. The rest quietly take up trades, driving trucks or doing routine jobs, taking pride in the diligence of the work.

But the landscape is about to shift in a way no one can ignore. Artificial intelligence can already paint more skillfully than most painters, write more fluently than most writers, code circles around any programmer, and drive trucks more safely than any driver. What happens when we are no longer needed?

This time, we won’t be able to soothe ourselves by saying success is impossible because the world is absurd or unfair. We won’t be able to disappear into political art, diligence of work, or power professions, because they won’t exist—or they’ll be reduced to the weakest human link in a faster, more creative global intelligence. We’ll have to face, uncomfortably and undeniably, that it’s our own limitations staring back at us. AI will force us all to confront the unsettling possibility that even the most talented among us are, in fact, perfectly ordinary.

Soon, our jobs will become meaningless. If your job is meaningless, then your standard of living is also meaningless. As more work disappears, we will face the terrifying problem of leisure—something most human beings are spectacularly bad at.

Millions of adults might goof off or get into some kind of mischief. So, the powers that be will have to keep us busy with ‘meaningful’ work, so we won’t rebel (and to give us the funds needed to buy their stuff). And when they can’t do that—because AI can always do it better—they will at least give us the illusion of meaningful work, the sense that we are maximizing profits, winning the market, being creative, and gaining prestige, when in reality our labor will be no more significant than a video game.

We will all become playwrights, spending countless hours on a script that, even if it’s produced, few will see, fewer will remember, and won’t change a thing. But the illusion of importance will sustain us—and these illusions will keep us from facing the dull sting of our own mediocrity.