If AI Does All My Work, What Should I Do Next?

Weather again.

Reconstruction

In the Atlantic, German submarines were sinking ships bound for Britain almost every day. They sent orders with a cipher machine called Enigma, and believed it was too complex for anyone to break.

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But German operators sent weather reports at the same time every day, in almost the same format. Captured codebooks plus this predictable habit, and the U-boat code began to be broken in earnest.

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Even the best lock opens if it's predictable.

Ever felt a little uneasy when YouTube knows exactly which video you'll watch next? It means you're predictable.

If AI does all my work, what should I do next? Today we look for the answer in Zhuangzi, 2,300 years ago.

Stay to the end and you'll take away three things. From history: why the state that first unified China collapsed in just 15 years. From philosophy: the question a butterfly dream asks of AI.

From science: the surprising fact that a healthy heart doesn't beat evenly like a machine.

About 2,300 years ago, China's seven major states were at war with one another — the Warring States period.

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The western state of Qin would later unify China under the First Emperor. Led by a reformer named Shang Yang, it bound the whole country tightly with law.

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Households were grouped in fives to watch one another, and high rank went only to those who earned merit in war.

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The whole country began to run like a precise machine.

In the same era, in the state of Song, there was a minor official who tended a lacquer-tree grove. His name was Zhuang Zhou — the man we call Zhuangzi.

Record, Shiji etc.

He was poor. The story goes that when he went to borrow grain, the lender said he'd lend him a fortune later, once his taxes came in. Zhuangzi shot back:

Tradition, Zhuangzi 'External Things' (Miscellaneous Chapters; by Zhuangzi's school)

Don't cover today's urgent need with a big promise for later. He lived 2,300 years ago, yet he talks just like someone today.

It is said that the king of Chu sent envoys offering him what today would be the prime minister's post. Zhuangzi, still holding his fishing rod, replied:

Tradition

Scholars see Zhuangzi, with Laozi, as the thinker of living naturally without forcing things — what's called wu wei, 'effortless action.'

Interpretation

Zhuangzi's sparring partner in argument was his friend Huizi. After Huizi died, passing his grave, Zhuangzi is said to have remarked that he no longer had anyone to talk with.

Tradition, Zhuangzi 'Xu Wugui' (Miscellaneous Chapters; by Zhuangzi's school)

Alan Turing. Born in London in 1912.

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In 1936, at 24, Turing sketched an imaginary machine on paper — one that reads and writes symbols by following a few simple rules. The root of every computer today: the Turing machine.

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Note — Turing's paper was received by the London Mathematical Society on 28 May 1936, when he was 23, and read before it in November, when he was 24. "Root" is an interpretation: the foundation of the theory of computation.

When war broke out, at Bletchley Park he designed the Bombe, a huge machine for breaking Enigma.

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He was an eccentric. He reportedly cycled to work in a gas mask because of hay fever and chained his favorite mug to a radiator so no one would take it. He ran a marathon in 2 hours 46 minutes.

Tradition, Hodges biography (colleagues' recollections); Record (marathon, 1947)

A genius — and a bit adorable.

And in 1950 he began a paper with this first sentence:

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Scholars call Turing the father of computer science.

Interpretation

His proposed test, the Turing test, is still used as a yardstick for how human-like AI is — though many still ask whether good imitation really means thinking.

Interpretation, debated

One, it is said, turned down high office and went fishing; the other tried to end a war with a machine run by rules.

Three words are all you need to follow today's story.

To operate. Put a coin in a vending machine and the same can drops out every time. Moving by rules — that's operating.

Note · Operate = move by rules

To think: not following what's set, but weighing things for yourself.

Note · Think = weigh things for yourself

And to be alive. On which step of this staircase does AI stand today?

Note · Life = to be alive

You're not a fish — how do you know fish are happy?

Reconstruction · Tradition, Zhuangzi 'Autumn Floods' (Outer Chapters; by Zhuangzi's school)

The question asked on that bridge 2,300 years ago is one we now ask AI every day.

The two never met. What follows is an imagined conversation built from what they wrote.

One was written by a man 2,300 years ago; the other by AI for this video. Which one is human?

A is the human — Zhuangzi. B was written by AI. If you hesitated, Turing's question has already reached you.

Hold on — today even scientists seriously ask whether our world might be a virtual one, like a game inside a computer. The butterfly's dream is back.

Qin, the state of rules, unified China in 221 BC — and collapsed in just 15 years.

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Many historians blame its harsh laws.

Interpretation

Enigma had a strange weakness: no letter could ever be encrypted as itself. Turing and his colleagues exploited this gap — and the operators' predictable habits.

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All this stayed secret until the 1970s, so Turing could never tell the world what he had done. In 1952, under British law of the time that treated homosexuality as a crime, he was convicted.

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He died in June 1954, at 41. The official verdict was suicide, though some researchers point to the possibility of an accident.

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In 2013 the Queen pardoned him, and in 2021 his face appeared on the £50 note.

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Then, March 2016, Seoul: Google's Go AI, AlphaGo, versus Lee Sedol, 9-dan. In game two, AlphaGo's move 37 was one it estimated a human would play only once in ten thousand times.

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Game four: Lee Sedol's move 78. With this move AlphaGo failed to predict, a human won a single game.

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A move the machine couldn't predict — and a move the human couldn't predict.

Before I share my view, I'd like to hear yours.

There's no right answer. So far, those were the facts and scholars' readings. From here on, it's my own view.

At work, AI drafts our reports; at home, algorithms pick what we watch tonight.

AI is imperfect too, so it keeps learning — and it's becoming perfect very fast. We race too, trying to work faster and more accurately than everyone else. But once it's all done, what comes next?

Here's my answer. What comes after perfect is not an end, but a new evolution.

Life did exactly that. Genes copy themselves almost perfectly, but once in a while they make a mistake. Over long ages, nature sifts those small mistakes and they add up into new life. That's evolution.

Qin, on the other hand, bound tight by law, vanished just 15 years after unifying China. Living things are never finished. Within the time we're given, we keep searching for ourselves and learning.

The body is the same. A healthy heart doesn't beat evenly like a machine. The beats wobble slightly — and when that wobble disappears, doctors see it as a sign of illness.

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An age when AI does more and more of the useful work. Rather than straining to be more useful, life is a play — so enjoy it, don't stress. Wu wei, naturally.

Note · Wu wei, naturally = without forcing things

Zhuangzi already knew, 2,300 years ago: to roam freely without measuring everything by its use. That's the story of the gourd too big to be useful — make it a boat and float down the river.

Note · 'Free and Easy Wandering', the first chapter of the Zhuangzi = roaming freely

But what about food on the table? We all have to do work we don't want, for money. Zhuangzi himself was a minor official guarding a lacquer grove, and is said to have been so poor he went to borrow grain.

Philosophy won't pay your salary. The work you must do is the stage. On it, once a day, you add a small wobble of your own choosing. Cook Ding, the butcher, roamed freely like that within his own work.

Note · 'Nourishing Life', the chapter with Cook Ding's story = how to nourish life

I think AI will take the predictable, repetitive work first. What's left, then, is probably helping people live like human beings. I dream of a world where that work pays.

So here's my suggestion: why not try studying history, philosophy, science — and literature too?

Make your own reason to live — your own will — with your own hands. Making new mistakes, and learning again. Searching for what AI can't give us.

Great Games of Thought will study it with you — easily, and with fun. Not staying asleep, but waking each other's minds.

And from today, look after your body, take a little less stress, and try walking a road you've never taken.

Rather than living only for tomorrow's big promises, live seeing that you are alive today. What the carp needed, too, was this one ladle of water — now.

Each today you gather becomes the story that makes you.

History. Qin, bound tight by law, fell just 15 years after unifying China.

Philosophy: from the outside, we can't fully know what thinks or what's alive. So don't judge only by usefulness — learn to play freely.

Science. A healthy heart doesn't beat evenly, and evolution begins with small copying mistakes.

One last question. On the day AI does all your work, what will you be doing?