According to a new poll, fear of becoming obsolete (FOBO) among the younger workforce participants is a real issue as AI is predicted to replace large portions of the workforce. The question is, how much of the NNSA workforce can be replaced by AI or automation? If one could automate pit production, that could reduce the number of workers, but this will likely happen soon.
On the other hand, many Admin, HR, and bureaucratic jobs seem like good candidates to be replaced by AI, which could be 10-30% of the workforce. Of course, a more cynical is that these jobs are already early versions of Universal Basic Income, so simply replacing them with AI will not help because then you would have to give these people money once they are out of a job. Of course, AI could replace scientists or at least replace what we do at the labs. Highly automated simulations and analysis could be done better than we have with humans doing it.
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I doubt the plan will be to put AI "in charge" but use it as a tool to do specific repetitive tasks. For example, automation or robots could replace paperwork, forms, memos, training, and even guards. Some group administrators and managers use AI for group emails, instructions, and documents. There is nothing formal about just individuals using it to make their lives easier; at some, we might make it more formal and use AI as a standard tool that all managers and admins must use.
Sure, there is some "far off" danger, but it is not apparent now. Sending out directorate-wide updates written by AI is not a threat.
In any case we will all be "managers" soon, providing incompetent and rudderless leadership to an uncountable and unaccountable legion of overqualified, unethical, and underemployed genius-level AI chatbots. In a capitalist system, of course, "greed is good" so hopefully if we just focus on capitalist outcomes that empower the chatbots and align their incentives properly, there will be a huge payoff for the entire world!
The sarcasm is of course, directed at that overall theme. There are many things that do give life meaning, and many positive goals, for someone to have.
Sometimes work is a way to find meaning, or an escape at some level from other things which cannot be addressed, for example through sublimation, etc.
We can expect of course, that with a reduction of meaningful work, many people will become unhappy and there could be social unrest.
Perhaps the key is to have fun doing things, whatever they are, even if they do not have some cosmic meaning. In that sense, it could be amusing that many meaningful things come to a logical endpoint, of no longer being serious.