The debate about automation is usually framed in terms of jobs and money. But behind it lie older questions about what people owe one another. If every person has equal worth and must never be treated merely as a tool, then how work is organized, and how its rewards and risks are shared, is a moral question as well as an economic one.

Labor is not a commodity

The peace treaty that ended the First World War in 1919 created the International Labour Organization, and it set out a list of principles for working life. The first was that "labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce." The 1919 peace treaty that created the ILO declared that labor should not be treated merely as a commodity. A bag of wheat does not need rest, safety or a voice; a person does. The same treaty endorsed the right of association, an eight-hour day and equal pay for work of equal value.

Others had made similar claims. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln told Congress that "labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor." Lincoln argued that labor comes before capital, since capital is only the fruit of labor. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum defended private property but also the right of workers to form associations, and Rerum Novarum held that wages must be enough to support a frugal and well-behaved worker, whatever the bargain. These ideas fed into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, whose Article 23 lists a right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions, to protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work and to join trade unions. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration includes a right to protection against unemployment.

Labor, work and action

In 1958 the political philosopher Hannah Arendt distinguished three human activities: labor, which meets the endless needs of the body; work, which builds lasting things; and action, the public life of speech and deeds among equals. She worried that modern society had come to value people chiefly as earners and consumers. Arendt warned of a society of laborers facing the loss of labor, with nothing else left to give life meaning. For her, freedom from toil would only be a gift if people also had a rich public life to turn to.

Work as a school for citizens

Workplaces shape citizens in practical ways too. In a large 1995 study, Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman and Henry Brady found that jobs, churches and associations teach civic skills. Verba, Schlozman and Brady found that workplaces teach civic skills such as running meetings and writing letters, and that people who learn these skills at work are more likely to take part in politics. Unequal access to skill-building jobs can therefore become unequal political voice. This echoes Smith's worry from Level 1 that dull work can dull judgment.

Some countries give workers a formal voice inside firms. Under Germany's codetermination law of 1976, German codetermination gives workers half the seats on supervisory boards of large firms, those with more than 2,000 employees, though shareholders keep the tie-breaking vote. Studies have generally found little harm to firm performance, and some find more investment in training. Critics argue that it can slow decisions and that it protects current employees more than job seekers.

Choices, not fate

A common thread runs through this course. Technology creates possibilities, but people decide how to use them. A firm can use AI to replace workers or to make them more capable. A government can let the costs of change fall on whoever happens to be displaced or share them more widely. Workers can bargain, vote and organize. The word "robot" comes from a 1920 play by Karel Čapek, in which artificial workers built to free humans from labor end up overthrowing them. The play is a warning about forgetting the human purpose of work, not a forecast about machines. Treating the future of work as a set of choices, rather than as fate, is itself an act of citizenship.

Worked example: the new scheduling system

A hospital introduces AI software to schedule nurses and track their time with patients. It promises fewer gaps in coverage. Ask the questions of this level. Is labor being treated as a commodity, with shifts changed at an hour's notice to save money, or are nurses' need for rest and predictability built in? Do nurses have a voice in how the system is set up and a way to challenge its decisions, as codetermination or a union contract might provide? Does the system free nurses from paperwork to spend more time with patients, which is the part of the job many find most meaningful, or does it squeeze out that time? A system that saves money while respecting the people who use it is possible. Whether it happens depends on who has a say.