Guest commentary: The robots are coming home. Do we know what we want our time for?
By Krisztián Galánthai Fekete
Picture an early morning on the Central Coast. The fog is lifting off the water at Rincon and a surfer is already paddling out. Back home, the house is quiet except for a robot folding yesterday’s laundry. Nobody is rushing. The day belongs to the person in the waves.
That scene is not here yet. The pieces, though, are arriving one by one. robots that once worked behind safety fences in factories are now being built for kitchens and living rooms. AI agents already research, schedule and answer customers. I can picture a day when even a car earns its keep while its owner stays home.
This newspaper reported on Oct. 18 that Ventech would host “The Future of Work: Humans + AI Agents” at the Cabrillo Pavilion in Santa Barbara on Oct. 21. The panel was to look at AI agents taking on more complete business workflows, from research and customer support to sales and even building software and at how that could reshape talent and leadership.
Those are the right business questions. Let me add a human one. If machines do a growing share of our work, what happens to the time and sense of worth that work used to give us?
PEOPLE WHO LOVE LIFE OUTSIDE WORK HAVE A HEAD START
Here the region starts with an advantage. People on the Central Coast tend to know what they love outside the office: the ocean, the trails, the vineyards, the long table with friends. Think back to that surfer. The robot tidies the house, the car perhaps earns a little and they are out on the water.
For people who already have a life they love beyond their job, more free time is a blessing. They already know where it goes.
Not everyone will welcome this at first and that is no failing. For many of us, work has quietly answered the deepest question we carry: why does my day matter?
Take the work away and that question comes back, louder. People will need time for a spiritual or other source of meaningand for family and friends. None of that happens by itself. It has to be built, much as a career once was.
A practical place to start is a good example. In a family, most of us need one person who shows what we want our own family to be. In everyday life, it pays to find such a hero too, someone whose patience, generosity or courage you would like to grow into. Much of the coming work, I believe, will be the work of refining our inner values and a living example teaches those values better than a slogan.
OWNERS CAN PLAN FOR THE PEOPLE SIDE NOW
I have written about this before and a few ideas keep coming back to me. Meaning is made, not found. Your worth is bigger than your output. And your attention is your life: what you give it to, you become.
None of these needs a robot or a policy. They need a decision, made early, before the change arrives in full. Business owners who are planning for AI agents this year could prepare for their people with the same care, starting with themselves.
It can start small, with a conversation over coffee: which part of your work feels most like yours and what would you do with a free afternoon? Let the answer stay with the employee.
Then the owner can ask the same of themselves. Where do I stand on this now? What would I love to do and can I write it down? How can I start with a little time each week and give it more room as the change comes?
The robots may well come home. If we answer those questions first, the hours they hand back will feel less like emptiness and more like that morning at Rincon.
• Krisztián Galánthai Fekete is a computer scientist and writer based in Switzerland. His new book is Find Your Meaning in 60 Days, In the Age of AI and Robotics (book.drfekete.com).
