Impact of AI on Work: Positive Destruction and Replacement?

A recent New York Times headline posed the question: This is a question on the mind of anyone who makes a living using only their brains.

In my view, the answer to that question is an unconditional yes!

The Big Impact of Generative AI on Work

Yes, ChatGPT, along with a wave of other generative AI technologies, applications, tools, widgets, etc. will wipe out not only jobs but whole sectors. And not only will the disruption be large and widespread, but it will also be rapid.

Positive change: moving away from late-stage capitalism

But instead of the dread we all justifiably feel, this development is a far cry for those who believe so, unless we move away from the current late-stage capitalist arrangement in which economic growth is driven solely by dogma. A very positive one, I believe.In trying to maximize profits at all costs, unimaginable disaster is the impending collective fate.

Please let me explain.

Related article: ChatGPT is all the rage, but don’t stop learning just yet

White-collar unemployment and subsequent turmoil

First, what ChatGPT and generative AI do for white-collar workers is what “labor-saving devices” (called back when they started to be introduced) did and has been doing before. It is important to note that . Over 100 years of blue collar workers and workers. In other words, this is arguably a monumental and relentless push to cut production costs in pursuit of greater bottom line profits, and it is by no means new.

But what is new is that no one really cared about the fate of manual workers except those who lost their jobs (white-collar workers cared little, white-collar workers cared little , in the case of white-collar unemployment, not only do we tell our children to work hard and get good grades, but we also have a sense of compassion for those who are suffering. , expect a general ruckus from a wide range of workers who felt they were a far cry from where they thought they were, given that they worked so hard to get those expensive degrees and actually get those Dropping a good chunk of your salary to pay for a degree — on the whole, especially compared to those who use their hands — the situation is all well bearable.

Related article: ChatGPT is already replacing humans in the workplace

Beyond White Collar Jobs: Impact on Elite Professionals

And AI isn’t just going to swallow the work of those workers. It also surrounds those who have hitherto enjoyed comfortable and elite work: consultants, researchers, professors, and “experts” (who surround them and occupy what chiefly the anthropologist David Graeber has). (not to mention those who are holding back). These days it’s called “Bullshit Job”).

In fact, as a result of this huge mess affecting the self-proclaimed “best and brightest” among us, the same frivolous and callous remarks we heard when it was blue-collar who were being culled. will no longer be heard. Labor. “Well, this is the ‘price’ that ‘we’ have to pay for progress.” Here we highlight only the most offensive of the euphemisms, often used by those who speak them coldly and heartlessly) come to sound cruel and unsympathetic. never really had a strong lobby behind them, the union was the only tool at their disposal and we all know how the union has been utterly emasculated and castrated. I know Whereas those who suffer from the consequences (depression, alcoholism, family breakdown, and even suicide) have quietly kept low profile, it has come to hinder those who make a living using only their brains. , is a completely different ball game.

Labor Migration: A Major Social and Economic Problem

Now, as white-collar jobs are mercilessly evaporating, see how “labor migration” actually becomes a very important social and economic problem (as is the “opioid epidemic”). , we shall be told — another example of a long-standing catastrophe that suddenly became critical when victims were no longer caring for minorities. Expect laws and policies to assist displaced persons to be introduced and enacted swiftly, just as a trillion and several dollars have been printed and distributed when realistically looming.

Laws and policies to help displaced workers

So yes, I say “go AI” and disrupt society as much as possible. In doing so, it does not focus on ensuring some of the stalled, necessary, and far behind progress (no horror quotes in this case). In the name of some voodoo, as Hocus Pocus Trickle Down Economics, wealth continues to be concentrated at the tip of an ever-dense, ever-narrowing pyramid, but those dirty manuals Depends on the happiness and welfare of human beings of flesh and blood, including workers.