Before you downvot just hear me out.
For years, companies were paying people to write reports nobody read, attend meetings that summarized other meetings, produce content that existed just to fill a quota. The whole system worked because the cost of automation was too high, so humans were the cheapest option.
Now AI does it in seconds. And suddenly everyone's outraged.
But here's my actual question: if your entire job can be fully replaced by a prompt, were you ever really doing something meaningful or were you just filling a slot in a system that needed a warm body?
I'm not saying people are worthless. I'm saying the jobs were. And we confused the two things.
The jobs that AI struggles to replace aren't the fancy white-collar ones. It's the nurse, the electrician, the plumber, the mechanic. The irony is that society always looked down on those roles but now they're the most AI-proof work on earth.
We built an entire economy of abstraction, layers of management, coordination, and content, and called it "knowledge work." AI just called our bluff.
Am I wrong?
[link] [comments]