[ajkessler]

Providing value is nothing more than fulfilling someone else's desire, whether that desire is for a shiny new car that accelerates very quickly, or a new way to communicate, or something pretty to look at, or something delicious to eat, or etc., etc.

Luckily, human beings have essentially unlimited desires. For this reason, there will always be sufficiently valuable things for people to do.

If there is truly nothing valuable for an entire population to do, ie if machines can fulfill every desire we can dream up, it means humanity has finally created utopia.

[AlisdairO]

Unlimited desires is probably a stretch. Substantial, certainly.

The problem is not utopia, it's the situation where there's nothing useful for, say, 20% of the population to do. I think there's plenty for the highly intelligent and well educated to get on with, but for those without (and perhaps unable to achieve) that level of education, it's a tougher situation.