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Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

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Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#11

Well, this is what future LLMs are for. Somewhere I saw a great quote about "AIs having meetings with AIs" and essentially doing nothing... But doing nothing very efficiently. And if this makes leaders uncomfortable by undermining the original human busywork, good.

Can someone invent an AI bot that will attend standup on my behalf?

Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many only look at first order consequences and ignore anything beyond that. Despite history having a huge number of societally enhancing innovations to reference that also took jobs at the time.

Where this historical changes also aligned with decades of wage stagnation? I'm not buy this shit anymore. Most technological advances are economic enhancing innovations, society be damned! The technology being developed today is consolidating wealth at the top. No one is getting from the gig economy. Stock holders on the other hand? Doing amazing!

> The technology being developed today is consolidating wealth at the top. No one is getting from the gig economy.

The top level Tax Rate has declined from 91% tax rate to 37% tax rate from 1950s through 2020s, and you blame technology for the failure of our society to redistribute wealth?

Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we have somehow chosen to create a world where when a computer takes over your job this is bad for you.

You can always shovel coal into the massive furnaces that power the AI bots.

What's ironic is the sci-fi future we dreamt was one where robots took over the back breaking work, letting humanity focus on arts, sciences and philosophy, but the reality we got is one where humans are still responsible for a lot of the back breaking work, while AI robots are now writing movie scripts, composing music and painting paintings.

Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we have somehow chosen to create a world where when a computer takes over your job this is bad for you.

Because many only look at first order consequences and ignore anything beyond that. Despite history having a huge number of societally enhancing innovations to reference that also took jobs at the time.

So? I don't claim otherwise. The fact that a life ground to dust is an effective lubricant for the engine of progress or whatever is not comforting or righteous. Maybe you could stand to consider the first order consequences a little more.

Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many only look at first order consequences and ignore anything beyond that. Despite history having a huge number of societally enhancing innovations to reference that also took jobs at the time.

So? I don't claim otherwise. The fact that a life ground to dust is an effective lubricant for the engine of progress or whatever is not comforting or righteous. Maybe you could stand to consider the first order consequences a little more.

Feeding the poor via technological advances lowering cost of food production is not righteous in your opinion?

Despite those agricultural workers who lost their jobs.

Innovation in aggregate benefits most people in the long run via lessening real costs of goods. Producing goods in an inefficient manner raises the real cost of living for society.

Was life better when the average person spent 80% of their income on food?

Will life be worse for the average person when goods and services become 50% cheaper through AI driven automation?

Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#17
In reality when you really think long and hard many jobs are kind of useless.

I could argue that in the grand scheme of things our existence might be completely useless and irrelevant. Yet we spend our short existence doing things which have almost no meaning, some of us try to impress our friends and neighbors. Put up some accomplishments on our useless CV before we turn into dust. Others will raise their offspring to continue this until our planet can no longer sustain life.

Humans are weird man.

Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#19

In reality when you really think long and hard many jobs are kind of useless. I could argue that in the grand scheme of things our existence might be completely useless and irrelevant. Yet we spend our short existence doing things which have almost no meaning, some of us try to impress our friends and neighbors. Put up some accomplishments on our useless CV before we turn into dust. Others will raise their offspring…

I was just thinking about this on a walk this evening. Life is weird as hell and I find it rare to meet others that share a similar viewpoint

Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose

#20

Well, this is what future LLMs are for. Somewhere I saw a great quote about "AIs having meetings with AIs" and essentially doing nothing... But doing nothing very efficiently. And if this makes leaders uncomfortable by undermining the original human busywork, good.

One of Graeber's points not included in OP's article is that these jobs partially exist as a signal of power: the big manager needs to show status by having three EAs, not just one, even though three EAs do not much. LLMs can't replace power-signaling and politics!
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