If you know me, you know I follow all things AI, and I am a huge comedy fan. The following post is a summary of a speech by comedian Brendon Lemon, and his take hit different.
The future of work is about to undergo a significant transformation, thanks to the development of chat GPT, an advanced artificial intelligence technology. This transformation is not new, as it has been talked about for a while now, but its potential impact on office work is so significant that it is likely to change the way we think about work. In a year-long program, a smart and hardworking friend of mine decided to expand his resume by learning to code. However, chat GPT now has the ability to do everything that he did, but better, faster, and cheaper. Thus, what was once believed to be a solution to job redundancy, learning to code, is no longer relevant. The only thing that will be necessary for human beings is to ensure that everything fits together properly. Even this requirement will soon be innovated away.
The concept of job destruction is not new, as Jean Baudrillard* discussed it back in the 80s and 90s. Destruction can occur in two ways; with an absence of something or an abundance of something. In the case of jobs, as we know them, they will functionally go away. People will have to do manual labor and in-person performance, and that will be it. The fiction of ownership, especially intellectual property, will be laid bare, exposing the unfair and ridiculous system of capital.
In the next two and a half years, customer service, sales, management assistants, coding, marketing, and product engineering jobs will disappear. Content production may have seemed safe initially, but even that will soon be handled by chat GPT. Imagine reading a romance novel, and chat GPT can write one specifically tailored to your interests. Similarly, the future of Netflix will have shows created entirely by AI, tailored specifically to the viewer. In the next ten years, doctors will also be out of the job as AI will be able to diagnose everything from images.
As a result of this automation, 90% of jobs will no longer be necessary. The economy will become a forum where people who have power can exercise control over most of the resources for their own benefit. The transition will occur in the next two and a half to three years, with make-work projects attempting to get people to work, similar to the ones created during the Great Depression. These efforts may be woeful since institutions, particularly in the United States, are not prepared to handle such a massive shift in the economy.
Ultimately, AI will lay bare the fact that the logic of the marketplace is causing people to participate in a system as a joke, as a kind of performance that they are all doing. Nobody loves work, and nobody wants to do it. People only do it because they have to. Thus, the future of work is uncertain, and as the world evolves, people must adapt to these changes to survive.
*Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher, cultural theorist, and social commentator who is well known for his contributions to postmodernism. He was born on July 27, 1929, and died on March 6, 2007. Baudrillard's work dealt with issues such as consumerism, media, and technology, and he was known for his controversial and provocative ideas. He believed that society had entered a new era, in which the boundaries between reality and simulation were becoming increasingly blurred. Baudrillard's work had a significant impact on fields such as sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and philosophy. Some of his most well-known books include "Simulacra and Simulation," "The Consumer Society," and "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place."