Brown: Do AIs celebrate Labor Day?

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As a little kid, I clearly understood what my dad did for a living. He overhauled diesel engines, and some nights came home late covered in grease. After removing his dingy overalls, he would read “Garfield” comics to me while smoking a cigarette. One whiff of Winston reds and diesel brings me home.

My career, mostly odorless, is much harder to describe. My kids think I pay bills by staring at a screen and typing until someone gives me money. That’s painfully close to the truth.

The definition of work varies, though we each maintain a notion of honest labor. As Americans mark Labor Day 2025, this goal becomes murkier.

Consider how much work changed over the past century. The automation of agriculture, mining, manufacturing and clerical tasks disrupted millions of lives and entire communities. Unions rose to grow the middle class but now ebb as we grind our way through the hustle economy. Meantime, we wrestle with health afflictions caused by sitting too much or the wrong way.

Today, artificial intelligence shapes the agenda of big business, raising one final question. After automating almost everything, what happens if machines replace our last marketable asset: our brain?

People think Ely, Minn., is the end of the road, but the road goes farther. Fifteen miles past the edge of town, just over the Lake County line and four miles south of Canada, you find the Tofte Lake Center.

During warmer months, you’ll find Liz Engelman here, guiding cohorts of artists and writers through one- or two-week sessions at a former fishing resort she’s converted into a creative retreat.

When I was there, artists were gathering as part of a family fellowship. Child care was provided so that moms and dads could work while still spending time with their children. Engelman said it’s important for the children of artists to see what their parents do.

The small cabins and winding trails reminded me of an adult summer camp. Attendees may use a visual arts studio, library and even a professional dance studio surrounded on three sides by screened windows facing a gorgeous woodland scene. Free time may be spent on the lake or relaxing by the shore.

Between 80 and 100 people come to Tofte Lake from all over the country each season to ply their creativity in these woods, sharing their work with peers and the surrounding community at the end of the week. Regulars include dance and theater troupes, writers and visual artists. Engelman said sometimes artists have breakthroughs in a day or two on projects that stymied them for months. Other times they end up creating something entirely different from what was planned.

“Nature is always in process,” said Engelman. “Everything is evolving and there is rarely an end result. Process helps us evaluate, reflect and refine what we are doing.”

Artificial intelligence mimics, to the degree possible, human thinking, but is limited to what we give it. I used ChatGPT to evaluate some extremely important data (cough, cough, my fantasy football draft). It produced useful analysis in less than a second. But I had to know what the AI needed and how to interpret what it produced. My human experience was a vital part of the AI’s success.

This is why younger workers and students are uniquely susceptible to AI’s negative effects and less likely to experience the positive ones. A study from Stanford University published last week detailed that among workers in “AI-exposed occupations,” 13% fewer jobs were reported for 22- to 25-year-olds, but all other categories showed stability or growth.

Thus, AI may benefit those with stable positions and established skills, at least at first, but it could pose a barrier to those seeking such things for themselves. So, just how are those students and younger workers going to gain the experience that makes AI useful? It’s a precarious experiment being conducted on all of us as we speak.

As I left the Tofte Lake Center, I passed the road that led to my great-grandmother Inez’s house. She spoke Finnish in the home, helped raise my dad and uncles, and lived long enough to hold my oldest son.

Times change and so does work. To the degree AI supports the creative process, it is no threat. However, if AI replaces the creative process and human development, it will gut the humanity from work and extract jobs from our economy. That will make a world more cruel and less interesting than the one we were born to create.