> "what is the role of humans in a scenario where work is no longer necessary?"

People have been fantasizing about this scenario throughout the industrial era--read William Morris' News from Nowhere (1890) for example--but it has failed to come to pass so many times, and the reasons are pretty obvious. The benefits of technology are spread unequally, and increasingly so over time, so only a wealthy few get the option of a post-labor existence. Also, our demands for the products of labor change as labor productivity increases; we prefer (or have been persuaded to act as if we prefer) material riches over lives with less stuff and more time.

We still haven't seen that AI actually replaces labor, as opposed to amplifying it, like a power saw or CNC mill used by a carpenter, so all these discussions about the end of labor seem like unwitting sales pitches for AI.

> “what would be the role of humans in an AI-first society”

The real question is why would anyone want, or want to help build, such an obscenity.