Pakistan, Sept. 11 -- For more than a century, adulthood has been built around one economic assumption: you will have a job, and that job will pay you a salary. From that salary comes almost everything else. The mortgage. The car loan. The pension. The insurance policy. The tax return. The school fee. Eventually, retirement.

Governments are built around it too. Banks lend against it. Tax authorities collect through it. Companies structure benefits around it. Universities prepare young people to obtain it. Artificial intelligence may not destroy work. It may destroy this arrangement.

Much of the debate around AI has centred on one dramatic question: how many jobs will machines eliminate?

Perhaps that is the wrong question. Millions of p...