Viewed across several millennia of human history, the proposition that “most people must work” appears less a fact of nature than a condition of history. The Agricultural Revolution tied most people to the land; the Industrial Revolution drew them into factories; and the twentieth century made “having a job” central to modern citizenship. We take work for granted not because it is timeless or unchanging, but because modern states, markets, and education systems have together instilled a belief: that people must prove their worth by being needed. Work is not merely an economic activity; it is also a vital foundation of identity, social connection, and public life.
Today, however, artificial intelligence—especially generative AI and automation systems more broadly—is, for the first time, moving beyond the replacement of physical labor and routine cognitive tasks into judgment, creation, collaboration, prediction, and expression: domains once considered more distinctly human. What is changing may be not only the structure of employment, but the entire modern order built around work as the organizing principle of society.
Against this backdrop, the Fangtang Institute focuses on a rapidly approaching question: if, for the first time in history, a society can meet its material needs without the labor of most of its members, will modern society’s foundational narratives of value, dignity, identity, and meaning unravel? As AI enters creative, cognitive, and emotional work, gradually diminishing the central place of work in human society, how will we redefine value, meaning, and social participation? Bringing economics, sociology, philosophy, and technology studies into conversation, the Fangtang Institute undertakes theoretical inquiry and field research into questions surrounding a post-work age. If work ceases to be the central mechanism of human society, how will society reorganize itself—and how will people find a renewed sense of worth, direction, and place in public life beyond work? This question concerns everyone, and we welcome wider participation in its study and discussion.