Thoughts on AI and jobs

Humans > Jobs

I have sympathy for people worried about losing their livelihoods. But at the same time I struggle to sympathise with the idea that jobs themselves are something sacred we should be fighting for.

I've always found it odd how much of our lives is devoted to jobs. A job is simply a means of survival. Jobs are inherently undemocratic, often soul-crushing, and yet we can't seem to imagine life without them. Chomsky once pointed out the irony: Western societies pride themselves on democracy and point fingers at nations deemed undemocratic, yet are completely at peace with their own populations spending the vast majority of their productive hours inside top-down organisations, doing work handed down from above.

I don't want humans to suffer because of AI, but to assume that the institution of employment is the best we have going for us, and the thing we should all be striving to protect, is bizarre to me. Any technology that reduces the need for jobs should be celebrated, in my view.

(I told a friend recently that, for similar reasons, I find it difficult to celebrate efforts around finding work for Palestinians who've endured so much. It's well-intentioned, and people need income, but after everything they've gone through, I think it's sad that sometimes the best we can offer is a chance to hold down a 9-to-5 job.)

Can AI replace certain jobs?

Yes. I don't think AI is intelligent the way humans are, and I don't think we'll ever get AGI (models with human intelligence), at least not based on the LLM approach we have today. So I agree with those who say AI can't and won't replace humans on that level. But people who hold that view often underestimate how much of salaried work today, including knowledge work, is essentially repetitive grunt work that AI, even in its current form, can already do. The reality is that much of what makes us uniquely human, the stuff AI can't do, is not needed, and not even wanted, when we're doing our jobs.

An inconvenient truth about AI

Rutger Bregman recently published a piece on the AI denial he’s witnessing. As someone who uses the latest AI models daily, I think he’s wrong about the exponential growth of AI capabilities. But I think current capabilities already have the potential to create massive change in the future of work.

I’m not saying that AI will lead to a future where companies will no longer hire people - new roles might emerge where AI is no good. But it can still allow us to rely less on jobs, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.