This touches such an important issue! The answer is "yes" but it must become "no". Our culture has made it such that we think life is about work and "accomplishing things". "Things" are of course work things. We might or might not get to a point where we don't need everyone to work. That should be awesome. Basic income guarantee might solve the economic problem associated with it, but not the social problem. We cannot derive our self-worth from our work. We need to learn to appreciate "free time". We need to legitimize enjoying and practicing the arts. I personally would love a future in which I could focus on practicing potter, learn Japanese, study economics just for fun and build the occasional video game or AI player for existing video games without worrying if it makes money or not. From conversations I've learned that this is not the case for many people. In a recent interview Marc Andreessen claimed that people in the midwest don't want checks form the so called coastal elites, but they want opportunities. We need to learn to be happy about the freedom we get form just getting the checks.
Maybe a good possible future would be that people focus on earning and saving capital when they are young and try to get to financially independent (ie., can live off the production of saved capital) as soon as possible. If most people were financially independent, jobs people did not want to do would pay well and people could quickly reach financial independence working these jobs (in a decade or so?). I think working hard and having the feeling of earning a life full of choices would go a long ways to prevent the psychological malaise of sucking from some one else's (the government) teat ones whole life. Also, having most of society overseeing capital instead of the 1% would probably be a good thing. This is possible today in the USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc. See the Mr Money Mustache[1] blog for an extended description and discussion of one way of living this life.
Of course not. But let's be clear, anything that can be automated to better effect, will be, and I see no reason to believe that will stop are purely functional pursuits. Artists? What's to say true AIs might not squeeze people out of that field as well?
A great many people find purpose through achieving some greater goal, or less loftily, through feeling like they matter, even if they do not. How easy is this fiction to perpetuate when you are, quite literally, house pets to the true intelligences running our society as house pets are to us?
Lest you think we'll have a place in running a future where we might have actually designed our betters, consider dogs. We love them, we pamper them, but we don't let them run wild in the streets and cause problems, because clearly they don't know what's best for them in the society they are now living. Humans may not be the dogs of the future, but let's not assume we're safe form that threat without real good assurances. To me, life in the matrix might be preferable to an existence where I'm constantly confronted by my inadequacy in any matter of import. Then again, my dog loves me, and while I feel sorry that I can't take him out as much as I believe he deserves, I'm not sure he realizes there's more to life (depending on point of view) than what he has.
So, is life without work worth living? Is contented slavery okay? I don't know. Truly. It seems like it should be bad, but how much of that is rational thought and how much of that is my culture speaking through me? My allusion to the Matrix was actually one of the more Utopian possible outcomes. At least we retain our sense of agency, even if it's a lie in reality.
You don't need "work", but you do need some kind of purpose. For basically the entire history of life on earth, that purpose has been "survive and reproduce" but humans have won that game so we have to find something else.
