AI and the Future of Work: Thinking Along with Aristotle

How should we shape AI-driven automation so that it serves individual and collective flourishing? Recent advances in AI, particularly generative AI, have rekindled fears of a workless future at a moment when work remains central to individuals and societies alike. AI and the Future of Work situates the prospect of AI-driven automation within a longer history of technological transformation, asking whether it should be feared or welcomed and, accordingly, how law and policy ought to respond. This book rejects the predictive, utilitarian, and work-centred paradigms that dominate the ‘future of work’ debate as ill-equipped to address what is fundamentally at stake. In their place, the book brings Aristotle’s ethics and politics into dialogue with modern legal and political theory – namely virtue jurisprudence and the capability approach – to build a normative paradigm centred on human flourishing (eudaimonia). This paradigm is applied to evaluate the desirability of AI-driven automation, culminating in an empowering vision for the future of work alongside actionable recommendations for researchers, law- and policy-makers, technologists, educators, and citizens. A must-read for anyone interested in the ethical, legal, and political dimensions of AI-driven automation or the value of work and leisure more broadly.