I disagree entirely with the claim that white collar work is meaningless. With a few outliers, people are not hired and paid six-figure salaries in order to do meaningless work.
What has proliferated endlessly are tasks or steps that are ostensibly required to perform that important work. If the work is a decision or the creation of a product or service then tasks are things like design, marketing, legal review, or simple coordination across multiple internal bureaucratic entities. Tasks are important in theory or in fact, but the amount of time and resources devoted to them is frequently out of proportion to their value because leadership fears legal or reputational risks.
In theory, one could make work faster and more obviously meaningful by limiting the number of tasks and the time spent on them, but leadership likes keeping their reputations intact, does not want to be sued, and does not want to be on the hook for a poorly conceived marketing or communication strategy. This keeps tasks proliferating at their current level.
AI can save money and time by eliminating people and streamlining tasks, but it cannot reassure leadership about the types of risk they face. Indeed, AI is less reassuring then a cadre of human lawyers and design experts saying everything's okay.
Right, but that's an idea built around satisfying Boomers and Boomer ideology. The need to satisfy those managers is the old way of thinking that was trained into people by an obsolete paradigm.
I would think that for a while, AI is just going to mean not much growth in white collar jobs, as existing organizations use AI to replace tasks that were once done by humans. And then, maybe in about 20 years, you will see a lot of new companies and organizations that are built from the ground up around AI. I don’t know what those organizations look like, and I don’t think anybody does because it is going to involve a lot of trial and error before people figure out how to really use AI.
I disagree entirely with the claim that white collar work is meaningless. With a few outliers, people are not hired and paid six-figure salaries in order to do meaningless work.
What has proliferated endlessly are tasks or steps that are ostensibly required to perform that important work. If the work is a decision or the creation of a product or service then tasks are things like design, marketing, legal review, or simple coordination across multiple internal bureaucratic entities. Tasks are important in theory or in fact, but the amount of time and resources devoted to them is frequently out of proportion to their value because leadership fears legal or reputational risks.
In theory, one could make work faster and more obviously meaningful by limiting the number of tasks and the time spent on them, but leadership likes keeping their reputations intact, does not want to be sued, and does not want to be on the hook for a poorly conceived marketing or communication strategy. This keeps tasks proliferating at their current level.
AI can save money and time by eliminating people and streamlining tasks, but it cannot reassure leadership about the types of risk they face. Indeed, AI is less reassuring then a cadre of human lawyers and design experts saying everything's okay.
Right, but that's an idea built around satisfying Boomers and Boomer ideology. The need to satisfy those managers is the old way of thinking that was trained into people by an obsolete paradigm.
I would think that for a while, AI is just going to mean not much growth in white collar jobs, as existing organizations use AI to replace tasks that were once done by humans. And then, maybe in about 20 years, you will see a lot of new companies and organizations that are built from the ground up around AI. I don’t know what those organizations look like, and I don’t think anybody does because it is going to involve a lot of trial and error before people figure out how to really use AI.