White-collar jobs face the AI axe and I don't give a damn!
Am I a bad person for not caring if white-collar workers lose their jobs?
The AI monster is beginning to run at full throttle, chopping down many jobs in its path, and it is now headed straight at white-collar workers. But here’s the thing, my dear frens, I simply do not care. I really don’t, and I’ll tell you why in this post.
First, here are some details from a recent DM article:
In recent weeks, AI-related white collar layoffs have escalated, with job cuts announced at Google-parent Alphabet, Duolingo, and UPS, among others.
'The impact of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence adoption is beginning to be felt from a jobs perspective, particularly in Media and Tech, but truly across sectors,' said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
One study led by Princeton professor Ed Felten lists the jobs most exposed to replacement by AI.
They include management analysts, lawyers, professors, teachers, judges, financial advisers, real-estate brokers, loan officers, psychologists, and human-resources and public-relations roles.
Jobs in the U.S. that are likely to have a high risk of being replaced by AI include budget analysts, technical writers, and web developers, while careers as barbers, firefighters, and pipelayers have the lowest risk, according to a Pew Research Center report.
Falling in the middle for the most at-risk jobs positions are chief executives, veterinarians, interior designers, and sales managers.
If you are currently in a white-collar job, then this is likely to upset you. I understand; believe me. And, if you are a reader of mine, then my sympathy and prayers are with you for your continued employment and success.
Too many white-collar workers are woke commies
However, that is where my concern begins and ends with AI destroying white collar jobs. Far too many people in those jobs are woke communists, and that includes managers as well as the people that report to them. These kinds of people could not have cared less about someone losing their job because they refused to accept the lies pushed by the woke commies.
Some of the companies, such as Google, are ground zero for woke communism. The people working inside such tech companies are overwhelmingly far-left and not only drank the woke Kool-Aid, they went back for seconds, thirds and fourths. I have no sympathy for them being laid off whatsoever.
Remember that these very people often took great satisfaction when some middle-of-the-road or right-wing person lost their job because they said something that went against woke commie dogma. They had no hesitations or remorse about someone that they didn’t like losing their job, so screw them when it’s their turn.
Some white-collar workers are snobs
I also remind all of you also of the snotty and condescending attitude of these people toward blue-collar workers who suffered layoffs in the past. Remember the “learn to code” bullshit? I sure do; I haven’t forgotten it, and I never will. The laptop class has always considered itself better than people who actually do things in the physical world.
But, oh my goodness, how the worm has turned! The laptop class is about to get swamped by AI, and soon many will turn to blue-collar work in desperation. Some will even end up on OnlyFans or some other such sites to try to make ends meet. It’s tough to have sympathy for these people, given how they’ve viewed and treated blue-collar workers for so many years.
So much for learning to code!
AI has already hit writers hard by taking many jobs
I also have no illusions whatsoever about my own potential problems with AI costing me employment. It’s bound to affect all of us, to some degree or another. The best we can do is try to roll with the changes and do what we can to keep going and keep earning whatever kind of income we can get. I am no exception in that regard.
Look at what AI has already done to content writers, web writers, tech writers, etc. There has already been a significant job loss for writers as companies have tried to cut costs by using AI to write their content. CNet is a good example of this, as is Sports Illustrated. Writers have been one of the first groups whacked hard by AI, destroying our jobs.
But when one door closes, another often opens. Such is the case with writers here on Substack. Many are refugees from the corporate employment system and are trying to build something for themselves that they can own and control, without having to deal with the corporations, who view them as liabilities to be gotten rid of at the earliest opportunity.
AI content sucks and everybody knows it
While I’m discussing the effects of AI on the employment of writers, let me point out here that AI content stinks. Most of it is bland and has little real value in terms of personality, insights, and style. It is writing taken down to its lowest common denominator.
I have no doubt AI-generated content will get better. But I can tell you this: I won’t read it the way I would read a human writer. Companies that use AI to generate their content should also be forced to disclose publicly what they are doing so that consumers know up front that they are not getting real writing from a human being.
Personally, I love the human angle in writing. I want to read another person’s thoughts and feelings about a topic. In other words, I love the humanity of writing. I do not want to read some AI-generated crap by a machine, and as soon as I knew the article was written by an AI, I would immediately write that article and publication off completely and permanently.
AI is not going away, so we must adapt to it
One thing is for sure: AI is not going away. There is no point in pretending that it is or in hoping that it will change as little as possible. But there is one vulnerability that AI has that can never be fixed: AI is not human.
What does that mean? It means that humans can choose to buy content (and other goods and services) exclusively made by other humans. The giant corporations can do as they please, but each individual human being can also do as he or she pleases, and that means that we don’t have to buy or use AI-generated products and content.
So when you decide to spend your hard-earned dollars, try to make sure they are going to another human being and not to an AI content mill or similar crap. You have the final say on where your dollars go, so choose wisely.
Support your fellow human beings, and they will support you in turn. Human beings working together for the benefit of each other is something no AI will ever be able to stop or destroy.
Remember: You are human, and you were created in the image of God. You are far more in this very moment than any AI will ever be, and don’t you forget it!
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My first degree was in electronics, back before computers were common. I have my journeyman tool & die certification. My second degree was in computer science, and my third was project management, all earned while working forty to sixty hours a week and raising a family. I was considered a factory automation specialist for the last fifteen years of my thirty-five year working life.
I know this will be a tldr for most readers, but if you would like some inside dope on automation in general and office automation in particular, this may suit.
Graeber was right in Bullshit Jobs: almost all cubicle jobs are nothing burgers created to fill org charts and help management pretend they are running the company. I eventually worked fulltime in seven factories, three of them startups, and the following statement is measureable, observable fact: Factories run better when the bosses and their minions are gone, and most of what gets done correctly gets done in spite of management and its clueless attempts at control.
- Logistics matters.
- Quality control matters at the lab level.
- Liasing with suppliers and customers matters.
Every other office job I ever studied could be coded out of existence easily with '4GL' style programming. It's not that AI can't do most office jobs. It's that most of them should not be done at all. Most cubicle and office jobs could be done more reliably with a few lines of programming; AI would be overkill if it lived up to its hype. Being as aware as a doorknob, AI will screw up more than it helps with draining the management swamp. Picture phone menu logic in charge of approving or declining purchase requisitions.
The universally chanted silliness about robotics replacing factory workers is also nonsense. America's "capitalists" started selliing their factories to Asia in the 80s when robotics came along. Why? Two main reasons:
1) You must know what you are doing to build and manage automation. A Harvard MBA <might> be qualified to manage an automated factory after ten years of automation engineering on a factory floor. Good luck finding a company smart enough to just promote an engineer with a secondary business degree.
2) One robot is many times as expensive to operate and maintain as forty Malay kids who dream of owning a bicycle. To meet his amortization schedule, Mr. Robot requires squeaky clean uninterruptible power in a temperature-controlled environment, a factory-trained technician in near attendance 24 hours every day of the year, and an engineer who understands motion control programming in 3D well enough not to kill people. Gravity and entropy require a robot to be reprogrammed constantly as it wears, and especially when moving parts are replaced. When the Malay kid drops a doll's head on the floor of the converted chicken house, with its string of 40-watt bulbs overhead, he bends down and picks it up. When Mr. Robot gets off his stroke, and he will, two dozen doll heads slam the safety fence before you can blink.
There are two production requirements that can make automating a production process feasible: speed and repeatability. I did time in a German vehicle assembly plant with acres of two-story robots revolving in a blur. There was more skilled labor per square meter in that place than there is at Johns Hopkins, and twice as much unskilled support staff. Assembling luxury cars from chassis to buff in 145 minutes made that plant feasible, and nothing less could have.
American business fled screaming from manufacturing altogether when programmable machinery began to take off 45 years ago, because that kind of manufacturing is beyond 99.9% of business people. Business loathes skilled workers of all levels. They want cookie cutter people filling cookie cutter 'positions'. American stockholders, ever hungry for the quick-boost profits that come from swinging the axe, are finally using AI, of all the clownish fad scams, to replace management fluff. I guess because it is the stupidest and most expensive possible way to "automate" those management jobs. Automating 999 of 1000 of them would be about as complicated as mapping a work process with a flow chart.
Automation requires repeatable, proven competence in technical trades; American corporations promote sycophancy. Automating production processes requires integrity, accountability, and professional standards that do not bend to pressure: American corporate life identifies and promotes corruptibility first and foremost. Automation work is a collaborative effort in which cooperation, not competition, is key. American corporations promote smiling malice towards peers and seething fear-fueled contempt towards one's understudies. If you have ever worked six months at a corporate job, you know I am telling it like it is.
If you love your kids, make them learn to do things. Using video controllers is good in moderation, but they need to learn a musical instrument, hammer nails, shape wood, prep and cook food, sew and knit, grow things in dirt. I see the soft little boneless, useless hands on twenty- and thirty-year-old people and I am hard-pressed not to cry out in horror. Being able to actually do something, anything productive, enriches children physically, mentally, and emotionally: make them learn something real or you will make them someone's cattle.
The tech world is especially bad for the progressive mind disease.
I work in this sector and it isn't the beliefs they have it is the mindless confidence. Most assume every normal person is pro immigration, pro gay, pro trans, pro cultural destruction.
I work in the laptop class and I am firmly of the view our societies are doomed until we confront them and their insane beliefs.