On December 4th, 2024, IPK Visiting Scholar Allison Pugh‘s book The Last Human Job was discussed in an opinion piece penned by Jessica Grose for The New York Times titled “Human Interaction Is Now a Luxury Good.” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article.

Pugh’s timely book reveals the hidden ways that technology is making many jobs miserable for both workers and consumers, at a moment when artificial intelligence continues its unregulated incursion into our lives.

The pro-tech argument I often hear in my reporting on education and mental health therapy is that it’s “better than nothing” for people who would otherwise not have access to services. Which is to say: Emotional support through a chatbot is better than no support at all, and A.I. tutoring is better than no tutoring at all. Too many people accept these arguments as true without considering the social cost of cutting out everyday human interaction and the financial and environmental cost of the technology itself. A.I. chatbots don’t come for free.

We’re increasingly becoming a society where very wealthy people get obsequious, leisurely human care, like concierge medicine paid out of pocket, private schools with tiny class sizes and dead tree books, and apothecaries with personal shoppers. And everybody else might receive long wait times for 15-minute appointments with harried doctors, a public school system with overworked teachers who are supplemented by unproven apps to “personalize” learning and a pharmacy with self-checkout.

Or, as Pugh puts it, “being able to have a human attend to your needs has become a luxury good.”

Read the full article here.

Photo credits: Eleanor Davis/The New York Times