Post-work society
form of society in which pursuing a fixed gainful occupation has become largely obsolete
In futurology, political science, and science fiction, a post-work society is a society in which the nature of work has been radically transformed and traditional employment has largely become obsolete due to technological progress.
Some post-work theorists imagine the complete automation of all jobs, or at least the takeover of all monotonous, rule-based, predictable and repetitive (and thus unworthy of humans) tasks in the future by ultimately cheaper, faster, more efficient, more reliable and more accurate intelligent machines. Additionally, these machines can work in harsher conditions and for longer periods of time without stopping than humans, which is expected to lead to a transition period of rapid economic growth, despite high rates of ever-increasing human unemployment. Overall, this development is expected to lead to an enormous increase in prosperity, provided that the wealth is redistributed.
Future directions
Future directions include the reshaping of the role of humans in the workplace and stressing the relative strengths of humans capable of adapting and integrating technology into their work and interaction. In addition to these capabilities, scholars emphasize the importance of humans taking advantage of these relative strengths, offering several areas which humans can remain competent in a rapidly developing workplace, such as emotional intelligence, service orientation, resource management skills, communication skills, and entrepreneurship skills.
Scholarly literature defines such areas where machines may surpass humans as "task encroachment", which presents an issue of growing encroachment of AI and automation into human work, especially in manual and cognitive tasks. It is estimated that approximately 40% of all working hours will be affected by AI models. It has been proposed for humanity to pivot towards roles that require emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills, assumed to be more uniquely human. However, studies show that in some contexts, modern chatbots generate answers that are rated as more empathetic and qualitative than human ones.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Post-work society” as form of society in which pursuing a fixed gainful occupation has become largely obsolete. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as form of society in which pursuing a fixed gainful occupation has become largely obsolete. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60775392. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Post-work society” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.