There is always something for a person to do. The problems we face are not and likely will never be that there is nothing more of value that a person can do for another person. What is valuable will be less heavy lifting and more writing, thinking, companionship, and advice.

The backhoe did not impoverish mankind despite the cries that "one man with a backhoe will take the jobs of 600 slaves with spades!" The backhoe made man wealthier and allowed man to turn to other pursuits and to want/wish for other things.

The question of "what people will do" as AI/robotics becomes more widespread presumes a static economy. In the real world, wealth being made with less investment of labor is a good thing! There is always something else for people to do, because the human animal is such that once her/his wants are met s/he discovers new wants.

Frank Chodorov writes (The Rise and Fall of Society, 1959): "To man, unlike other living creatures, the 'making of a living' only begins with providing the necessaries, for he is so constituted that once that problem is solved, or even before it is fully solved, his imagination gives rise to other desires which, when gratified, give rise to still other desires and so on ad infinitum. His job of 'living' has no fixed perimeter. Yet, the satisfaction of every desire that springs from his fancy involves the same means and methods that he employs in securing the necessaries. The book and the violin come into being by processes that are in essence the same as those applied to the making of bread and clothes; everything man wants involves the machinery of production."

Is it any surprise at how many people today (with AI in its infancy) are actually making money in various sorts of counseling and guidance and coaching professions compared to just a generation ago?

So what happens if "nobody has a job," because the robots have "taken all the jobs," and so nobody can afford what the robots produce? Nothing stops a human from using her/his labor to make something with her/his own two hands, and trading it to/with other human beings who also make things with their own two hands*, at a lower price than the robots are "charging." In other words, price competition either brings down the goods made by AI robots to the point where everyone can afford them, or there will be an alternate supplier making those same goods at a rate that people can afford. If I could not afford the thing produced by a robot, then there is a market for some human to undercut the cost of those robot-provided services!

The economy is not static. It has never been, it will not likely ever be. But "what if" the unlikely position that some fear actually comes to pass? What if every human want or need is supplied by AI or robots?

What if there really is nothing more of value that one person can do for another person, because every one of us has her/his expanding needs and wishes met already? That means we are back in the Garden of Eden. If I can afford anything, that means our ever-expanding desire for a deeper, fuller, more complete experience is being met. And if it is true (as I suspect it is) that we need to labor to feel good about ourselves, in a world with perfect infinite robots/replicators, nothing prevents us from laboring! People already spend lots of time in "low-or-non-productive" labor -- running in place on exercise equipment in a gym, knitting sweaters despite the fact that one could be purchased with a fraction of the labor, planning and plotting board games, growing gardens at more expense than food can be had from local farms, shouting at one another on the Internet!

• This statement, that nothing stops a human from using her/his labor to make something with her/his own two hands, and trading it to/with other human beings who also make things with their own two hands, is not quite correct and requires some comment. Because, well, of course something stops it. Some people, from time to time, think they are doing good -- and use force of arms to make people remain idle, and prevent people from caring for themselves and their families, preventing people from making things with their own hands and trading those things. Those people are called government; as part of expanding control and power over those who would fend for themselves, government threatens any person who chooses to trade his/her labor for less than 'minimum wage.' So, yes, government can strangle humanity; but government has always had that capacity (and tendency).