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Robotics has long symbolized progress: machines that make life easier, faster, and more efficient. What once felt like science fiction is now ordinary. Robots build, deliver, recommend, predict, and increasingly decide. Some even keep us company.

As automation expands, a strange possibility emerges: a world where there is less and less that humans need to do.

This raises a deceptively simple question: if effort becomes optional, what gives life meaning?

For some, a fully automated world promises liberation—freedom from drudgery, scarcity, and routine. For others, it raises quieter concerns. If work no longer structures our days, if machines outperform us in skill, care, and creativity, what happens to purpose, ambition, and identity? Do robots enrich the human experience, or do they gently move us from participants to spectators?

We already live among machines that feel oddly familiar—voice assistants that respond to us, systems that anticipate our needs, robots that resemble companions from science fiction. As they become more capable and more present, this café invites us to pause and ask not just what robots can do, but what we are for.

If there is “nothing to do,” what makes a life worth living?

Questions to explore together

  1. When we say “nothing to do,” what do we actually mean—no work, no struggle, or no necessity?
  2. If robots can perform all tasks, do humans lose purpose, or gain freedom?
  3. Does human value depend on productivity and contribution, or can meaning exist without labor?
  4. How might human relationships change if robots increasingly meet emotional or caregiving needs?
  5. In a world where survival and success require little effort, what might replace work as a source of identity or ambition?
  6. Who should decide what gets automated—and where, if anywhere, should limits be set?

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