What Do We Do When Machines Do Everything?

Originally published May 2020·Last updated February 2026

What if the point of machines was never to replace us, but to set us free? Below is a newspaper clipping from the early twentieth century, about how the type-writer deprived us of the art of letter writing.

Throughout history, we can find examples of such skepticism. My parents couldn’t imagine why we would all have to carry phones around with us all the time. What was wrong with the way things were, they said. Not long after, they would chastise me for not having my phone on me when they called. It would appear that when a new way of doing things comes along, it upsets us. It offends our sensibilities, to acknowledge that our life wasn’t already the best it could be.

The Luddites were British weavers and textile workers who vandalised machines in the factories, as a protest against the increased use of mechanised looms and knitting frames. Yet more cloth has been woven, more letters have been written since the power-loom and the type-writer. The craft of making clothes or the art of writing are as human as they have ever been.

We will continue to build things that take away from us the things we so carefully taught ourselves to do. And this will always scare us. Because we believe that the purpose of our life is to enjoy the fruits of our labour. So how dare machines steal our labour from us? But what if labour is only a short-lived struggle for humanity until we finally have to do nothing that we don’t want to?

Imagine a day, in the future; you wake up and feel like painting. What do you imagine the machines would do for you? The machines wouldn’t paint instead of you; as our skeptical view of machines would like us to believe. A machine would probably throw up a colour palette you’d like to use. It would show you that inspirational painting you saw at the gallery the week prior. Possibly play you some melancholic music, to egg you on.

The purpose of the machine, is not to do whatever it can do; but to let you be whoever you can be. The machines make us the versions of ourselves we want to become.

They always have. They always will.

We will continue to build machines that amplify our human nature. We are not creatures of labour. We are creatures of thought, imagination and wonder. Of joy and the pursuit of happiness.

We always have been. We always will.