Kerem Demir Karahan
November 12, 2026
Although hardly as famous as the Sistine Chapel or the four Raphael Rooms, the Gallery of Maps inside the Vatican remains my favourite place in all of Rome. The walls are adorned with incredibly detailed maps of regions in and surrounding Italy, from Corfu all the way to Genoa. The ceiling is filled with breathtaking mannerist works dwarfing even the grandeur of the Sistine Chapel.
Ignazio Danti, working with his brother Antonio Danti, took three years to finish the Gallery of Maps. They worked without the industrial scale possible in today’s architecture, individually painting, coloring and constructing every piece of one of the largest halls in the Vatican. They used simple brushes, ladders and maps that Ignazio had previously prepared using the portable quadrant.
Imagine one were to introduce Ignazio to a middle manager of a mid-sized firm in North America who is sending emails and using Slack to track the progress of their subordinates. Ignazio would be surprised that we consider this labor. For him and his contemporaries, work was fundamentally different from what we consider it to be today.
Ignazio was a geographer and a bishop. He was also an astronomer and a mathematician. Like other men of his era, who we today call “Renaissance men,” his interests were extensive. Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Raphael were all polymaths, masters of the arts and the sciences.
Being a “Renaissance man” was the ideal job of its age, whereas the rest of the population would be laborers and artisans, learning their trade through apprenticeship. At times, their surnames would reflect these occupations they often inherited from their family.
The job market today, in contrast, is characterized by a need and want for a high degree of specialization in labor. It is correct that the increased division of labor helped increase efficiency, but, at the same time, it significantly hindered the society’s chances to produce “Renaissance men.” To think that the masters of the Renaissance were much more skilled and intelligent than the great thinkers and artists that came later is wrong: however, they existed in a world where being learned in many fields, rather than specialization, was rewarded. The shift from polymaths to specialization is also reflected in education. The ancient universities of the world were largely institutions that taught a wide range of different subjects, from philosophy to astronomy, in order to create the well-rounded intellectual. Today, their modern counterparts focus on teaching specialized subjects, with the occasional “liberal arts” component of the curriculum that is reminiscent of the pre-Industrial ancient universities.
This increased specialization continued well beyond the Industrial Revolution. The advent of technology in the later half of the 20th century too destroyed many jobs for good, and created many in return.
Individuals fear that artificial intelligence will take over our jobs that, for the most part, have existed only for the past few decades. It is impossible to overlook the striking parallel between us and the Luddites of the Industrial Revolution protesting the introduction of weaving machines that would put them out of jobs.
Perhaps more so than unemployment, what we really fear is a loss of meaning. When the Industrial Revolution was first happening, Marx and Engels worried about the alienation of the working class and the crushing of the human spirit. Despite this, many people continue to view their professions as a source of purpose in their lives. It helps fill the long hours of the day with an activity that we cannot imagine an alternative to. The advancement of AI might change this. Historian Yuval Noah Harari warns of the emergence of a “useless class,” made up of people who now lack purpose as they were rendered unemployable by technology.
I would argue that work isn't what we find meaning in, but just an act readily available that we hold on to in order to give ourselves the feeling of relief that comes with knowing what to do with our time.
Before “industrial” work, our understanding of the meaning of life very rarely relied on occupation. Aristotle, in his “Nicomachean Ethics,” put achieving “eudaimonia” – doing and living well – as the overall meaning of life. In order to achieve this, one had to act virtuous and with reason. The aspect of work, for Aristotle, had to be intellectually stimulating and fulfilling. Most of our jobs today would not be what Aristotle viewed to help give meaning to one’s life; menial work is still common across the globe and underemployment is rampant.
The hedonists, led by Epicurus, were even less interested in work. They believed that the meaning of life was pleasure. The pleasure of enjoying a hearty meal, being in the company of loved friends and feeling the heat of the sun as you exit the sea. In Epicurus’ view, eudaimonia is freedom from pain and stable pleasure from life. The pleasure Epicurus discusses would come from virtuous acts that helped one’s own welfare and the welfare of others.
For Aristotle and Epicurus, like Ignazio, work was fundamentally different. They did not have to deal with bureaucracy, they did not have to deal with emails after work hours, nor did they have to deal with inhumane working conditions. They had the backing of their wealthy patrons who saw to their needs. This is in sharp contrast to labor today, which is characterized by long hours of repetitive work in order to sustain oneself.
AI can produce text almost as well as us. It can also create images and content that mimic the symbols we use to communicate. It is gaining the ability to follow rhythm and patterns to resemble music.
None of these are essays, art or music – acts that are inherently human and lie at the end of a process of imagination, creativity and effort. Still, they are quite convincing mock-ups of all three. Despite their similarities, however, I doubt we would plan trips to Florence to see Venus de Milo with a Gemini watermark or buy tickets to the Royal Albert Hall to listen to symphonies written by ChatGPT. We would appreciate the “effort,” but we wouldn’t be as moved by an essay from Claude compared to one from Montaigne.
However, we keep running into the error of passing our creative aspirations on to AI and keeping the menial labor to ourselves. We have AI thinking for us, rather than using it to free ourselves from cumbersome work.
Some of us might find using AI to write our essays or do our math exams as saving oneself from boring work, but it turns us into creatures of pleasure (and not in an Epicurean way). We offload our mental effort to the language model, and get satisfied when we get the “Got it. Here’s how to solve this problem.” response. Even better, we get excited when we read “Here are five key takeaways from this paper,” because now we won’t have to go through the cumbersome task of reading 15 pages.
Although AI seems to hurt our cognitive abilities, it also could present a way to unleash our creativity in a new manner. AI will redefine work to condense and accelerate it. We can leverage productivity gains from AI to dedicate more time and resources to allow humans to engage in creative and fulfilling tasks.
Advancing technology will replace the need for human effort in the most precarious situations. Oil rigs in the middle of oceans, deep mines and sanitation remain areas of work that are poised to change the most thanks to advancements in AI and autonomous technologies. Robots, powered by AI, can now put themselves in precarious positions with no risk to human life. Rather “boring” occupations too, such as the accountant, are threatened largely by AI.
Will this inevitably lead to unemployment? Most likely. Is that a bad thing? If we know how to answer it, no.
As efficiency in the workplace increases thanks to automation, humans will have more free time to pursue their interests and spend time with loved ones. Still, our needs cannot disappear. That’s why nations around the world must start embracing this new technological revolution along with economic reforms including expansive and proper universal basic income schemes.
There is no denying that we are going to see more people unemployed, or employed for less time, compared to today. It rests on states to provide all its citizens with enough money to sustain themselves, which will allow them to discover avenues of life they previously were not able to enjoy due to their job responsibilities.
UBI programs have been tested many times before; however, no country has an effective form of it yet. This is expected, as we never had such an immediate need for UBI until today. Still, the idea of a UBI program is hardly recent. Thomas More, in his 1516 work “Utopia,” argued that the UBI is the only way to stop the unemployed from turning toward crime to sustain themselves.
The notion that UBI is too costly to implement fails under closer scrutiny. Our current welfare systems are incredibly complicated, with many avenues for mistaken compensations. Thomas Straubhaar, the Swiss economist, states that UBI “bundles all social policy measures into a single instrument,” making social welfare much better organized. Long before today’s academics, economists and intellectuals from all across the spectrum, including Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell and Milton Friedman, have supported a form of UBI.
The most effective way for UBI to be achieved will be a form of “citizen’s dividend” where the state invests revenue from natural resources into securities and returns the profits to the people. An example of this already exists in the U.S. state of Alaska, where oil revenues from the state are redistributed to all residents. This program was found to decrease levels of poverty for all Alaskans, especially Indigenous Alaskans who are the most economically disadvantaged. The Alaska Permanent Fund provides us with a blueprint that can be further applied across the world.
States without the vast natural resources that Alaska has can still support UBI programs if they commit to a proper redistribution of the benefits from increased automation. Elimination of most menial work will largely benefit firms, who will see increased profit margins. The state, in order to ensure the livelihood of the newly unemployed, will have to intervene and claim a portion of the profits. This new revenue will then be invested into a basket of securities, which will begin to pay out dividends to all citizens.
If we let AI replace all of us in our formal lines of work, we can have all the time we need to read, listen, create and love. This utopian characterization rests on our states’ successful adaptation to a post-work society, where we ensure humans don’t become Fukuyama’s useless class, but instead individuals who can now truly discover their potential.
Instead, we are now making AI read papers for us, listen to lectures and create summaries. UBI can only take us so far. If we want to truly nourish the human mind, we have to seriously reconsider the way we use AI. We simply cannot afford for AI to create a shallow class of humans who rely on it for the most simple tasks.
As AI replaces work, we will no longer need to stick to the increased specialization of the Industrial Revolution. Instead, we will need to make a proactive effort to find new interests for ourselves and teach ourselves in different areas. While the Industrial Era was characterized by a battle between personal life and work, the post-work era will be characterized by a battle between vanity and action.
Facing the replacement of work will not be easy. Most of us are already too comfortable with letting AI take over intellectual tasks, leaving us to scroll endlessly on social media. Furthermore, we have become accustomed to the importance of specialization that it is now hard to imagine becoming learned in many different areas. We need better ways to define ourselves and our purpose.
We can turn back to ancient philosophy, just like European thinkers did during the Renaissance, to find new ways to define ourselves. The ideas of Aristotle and Epicurus could help us. The true success and promise of this post-work society, and its biggest danger, will lie in the fact that we are faced with the decision to define what truly is important to us.
Aesthetics have changed a lot since the Renaissance, so perhaps the near future’s Ignazios will choose not to adorn ceilings with Mannerist paintings and walls with cartography. Still, if we accept that the new AI revolution holds the potential to help us reclaim our intellectual spark, we can expect to see great minds of the new Renaissance. In order for them to succeed, our states have the responsibility to answer the changing economic situation with sound policies that will ensure the needs of each individual. Only then will we certainly allow the human spirit to soar, and it will be thanks to AI.
Photo Source: Richard Mortel, Flickr