TheSomeoneIsThinkingAboutThisJob

(ReadWith) AIAndJobs

I've been thinking a bit about what jobs AI is going to replace. Or rather what jobs will remain.

And I came down to three, rather cynical categories where humans are still "needed"

• role-model. This is any "job" where humans want to watch another human do it because they aspire to be like that human. Eg. celebrity, musician, sports-person, thought leader etc.
• EmotionalLabour. Any "job" where you are paid to "feel" something (or provide a sufficiently plausible simulation of it). Eg. carers, paid companions, prostitutes.
• Scapegoat. Any "job" where a person is paid to take responsibility for the activities of a machine (including AI) over which they don't really have control. But where it's convenient to have a human (capable of human error) to blame or prosecute for a failure. (Rather than the blame going to either the maker or owner of the machine) ScapegoatTheory

But I've also been ploughing through some stuff by and for consultants. And looking at some reports on plans for economic development in London. This is not intended as a criticism of the London admin. Nor of the plans specifically. But I was thinking how all such documents tend towards a kind of verbose waffle, and flashy graphical brochure-ware. That's often painfully dull and uninformative to read.

I was also thinking about DavidGraeber's BullshitJobs. And AbstractionAppealsToThePowerless

I was listening to a talk today and trying to keep an open-mind and not just dismiss it as a kind of high falutin buzzword salad. I guess most the clichéd terminology (eg. "corporate vision"), is really just very high-level abstractions. (ArchitectureAstronauts)

The terms seem empty because they can be instantiated on so many different ways. That doesn't mean having a check-list or model built of them, and then doing an exercise of trying to make them increasingly concrete, doesn't have some value. Possibly it IS the only way to force large bureaucracies to change their processes.

Anyway, what crystallised out of all these thoughts today is the "somebody-is-thinking-about-this" job. In other words, it's a job which is increasingly important in modern economies. We would like to think that someone is thinking about a problem. Whether it's planning the economic future of our city. Or where the company is going in the next 5 years. The performance of that, is itself a career.

It's not exactly emotional labour. Though some feel-good emotion is part of it. It doesn't necessarily represent good thinking or good ideas. But it represents an investment in the idea that someone is thinking. All these reports and flashy infographics really exist as a kind of VirtueSignalling / HandicapSignalling of the fact that someone is thinking about this.

The hell of AICustomerService and MachineGatekeepers is really going to be being trapped in a world where no-one actually is "thinking about this". But there's a huge amount of pretence that someone is.

I'm not saying that we've got there yet. Most consultants ARE really thinking. As are the government teams and projects and planners.

The someone-is-thinking-about-this job is a real one. That is at least part real value. But there is a disturbingly high proportion of it which is performative signalling. And when we start trying to apply AI to it, that proportion is going to increase. Until we do reach the point when no-one will actually be thinking about this. But the whole Potempkin edifice will still be there.