AI and job loss. I just was watching some business podcasts talking about the changing landscape as AI grows. Most of these podcasts are optimistic saying that profits will grow, more creativity, how if you have tech skills you will be even be more valuable. There is even talk about a nee golden age in science and tech and there will be more job opportunities as new kinds of science fields will emerge that could not exist without AI.
That being said, these same podcasts said that most advancements will be in the private sector and that academic or government are not really going to be be able to take the same advantages. Basically AI will be able to replace what are called BS jobs. Companies want to get rid of these for profit reasons but government jobs and academic jobs have no real motivation to do this. I just was watching some business podcasts talking about the changing landscape as AI grows. Most of these podcasts are optimistic saying that profits will grow, more creativity, how if you have tech skills you will be even be more valuable. There is even talk about a nee golden age in science and tech and there will be more job opportunities as new kinds of science fields will emerge that could not exist without AI.
That being said, these same podcasts said that most advancements will be in the private sector and that academic or government are not really going to be be able to take the same advantages. Basically AI will be able to replace what are called BS jobs. Companies want to get rid of these for profit reasons but government jobs and academic jobs have no real motivation to do this.
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The other issue I see no possible incentive to get rid or replace these kinds of jobs at NNSA labs. Chris Wright head of DOE said we need to be more "efficient" but I have seen no sign of this whatsover. In fact it seems like the system reacted to his statement and things become much more inefficient as some preemptive way to protect itself. In the last 6 months, we have even more paper work and it has become harder to get stuff done.
"A Theory is a 2018 book by the American anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters."
If AI could do someone's job, it is a sign that job is useless. AI is an assistant requiring capable human oversight. Humans need to check and refine whatever an AI puts out. AI can make us more efficient and effective. Any task AI can just do is beneath humans and should probably be eliminated.
The real concern is that AI will be monetized by the same system that turned social media into a pox on society. Once we demand profit be made by AI, it will be unleashed to sell us crap. Lots of it. AI is vastly more capable and dangerous than social media. Think of all the damage unethically applied AI will do to society. It could be a force for good, but in the current system that is almost impossible.
It is certainly monotonic but it has has some periods of acceleration. We had one in the last year. I believe it was a reaction from the Chris Wright order to be more efficient. I think a number of places ordered more paper work, hired more managers, or brought one extra people that do nothing, or just said certain paper work are no so complex that they will take months to complete. We are now getting more and more daily AI generated junk from managers and secretaries that add nothing. If anything AI has slowed the pace of work at the labs as it allows for more junk, to be done.
I have also noticed that if you need some paper work done, it only gets done Thurs night by and AI and it is wrong because the office people never check what the AI made. They are gone every Friday. They come back Monday and you complain and they say they will get to it. Nothing happens until next Thur and the AI does an even worse job. Now you have to schedule in person appointment to fix the issue. The manager or paper pusher is only onsite 2 days a week, and very hard to get hold of. When you do get hold of them, it is clear they never even looked at the document which takes lie a minute to fix. They looked amazed at thought that you would actually want this done since it means you have to work now as well. It is like a nod-nod wink wink, you know you do not want to work, we do not want to work, so we can all sort get nothing done together. This attitude has really taken off since Covid but it seems like it has gone into overdrive in the last couple of years at LANL.