Insteresting post, if AI developing slowly, I think this situation will disgusting all of us.

Escape velocity from any job at all.

I find the concept of the "Bullshit Job" to be utter nonsense. Unless your workplace is very poorly managed every job will serve some purpose toward the profitability of the company. You as an observer may not understand what that purpose is but, it is there.

Agree that it's impossible to define precisely what makes a job bullshit, but disagree that all jobs - even in a "well run" private business - increase profit or are necessary.

I think this is because, ultimately, all businesses are just a collection of people who may be somewhat rational collectively, but irrational at an individual level - there will always be managers in a good business who create superfluous jobs and want to expand their team, I've never met one who's said "my team should shrink, my budget is too high" - the talk is always of expansion.

I know that in theory 'the market' should penalise companies that hire too many superfluous employees, but this would presuppose that markets are truly competitive, which many aren't for many reasons.

Similar to how as computers get faster, they cram more garbage into each millisecond of compute (because now they can)

As someone who worked in corporations, I have to say it : yes, Bullshit Jobs exist. Even more so in the US and Japan, the Kings of unnecessary bureaucratic bullshits and forms filling. According to McKinsey (2016), 69% of administrative jobs could be automated. But we refuse to do so, and keep using tons of papers instead of digitalizing all info in the cloud. Maybe when Boomers and X finally f**k off the economy, we may see some changes, but I doubt it. We need a bloody revolution.

Except for Graeber's, Have you seen any books, articles explaining Bullshit Jobs phenomena a bit more seriously/scientifically ?

Yes I read and enjoyed it, I found it equally insightful and hilarious

The only thing I'd say is that, in relation to this discussion, he has a very loose definition of what makes a job bullshit. Am I right in saying he considers a job bullshit when (and only when) the employee considers it bullshit? It just seems too broad and leads to contradictions.

Yes, that's his definition.

I would maybe add : if a machine can do your job better than you, and at a lower cost, you have a Bullshit Job. Eg : Pharmacists, data entry mf, tellers...some people love their bs jobs tho, e.g sugar industry Lobbyists who get paid millions each year to veto new national health measure in Congress.

I think a few accademic tried to venture a lil bit in these new waters, but didn't generate any new insights. I think we should ask them on Reddit.

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17308744/bullshit-jobs-book-david-graeber-occupy-wall-street-karl-marx

This interview clarifies a few points. I think Bullshit Jobbers are also random positions created by rich rentier to artificially inflate their company, thus their pride. "I manage a consulting agency of over 300 people", sounds really nice at a fancy dinner, even though half employees are underpaid young interns.

>I would maybe add : if a machine can do your job better than you, and at a lower cost, you have a Bullshit

That makes a lot of sense, I don't think Graeber talked a lot about that - if at all.

Speaking of data entry, I (unfortunately) have to do a little bit of this at work: nothing difficult but I take input radiological reports and extract information to put onto excel for data analysis.

By way of background: medical radiology reports are written in free text, they have no structure to them and each radiologist writes in a different format. Extracting data from these reports is very important because let's say you develop a new cancer drug: you would really like to know if it improves outcomes - e.g. slowing the spread of cancer.

I pushed for us to hire an administrator to do the data entry on my behalf. The administrator came, I spent hour after hour, day after day trying to teach them to no avail - they just couldn't wrap their head around how to do it.

Brainwave: I thought maybe I can get ChatGPT to do it. I spent 30 minutes teaching it and voilà - paste in report, churns out exactly what I want in spreadsheet format. I've shown it to some academics at the university and they're just absolutely blown away by it, it'll be a complete game changer.

Anyway, without wanting to be disrespectful to our administrator, ChatGPT just put them to shamez it was massively more intelligent and easier to teach than them. I foresee AIs having the ability to 'pilot' windows UI in the near future with the ability to work cross-software with a digital mouse/keyboard. When that's the case, I really think it will be an existential threat to data entry workers and unskilled administrators.

Profitability can be pointless. I used to work for a government contractor. We charged the government per hour, so there was tons of bullshit we had to do to get even the simplest thing done. Some steps were required by law - laws created with the help of our company. A lot of time was also wasted on extremely slow computers, pointless meetings, etc. I’d estimate that >50% of the the jobs there would not be needed if operations were run effectively.

Now think of every sector with strong ties to the government. Education, defense, banks, healthcare, etc. All have massive bureaucracies designed to create jobs and siphon money from the government

Right to life through labor for income is so archaic and downright inhumane if we have the means to automate

Has capitalism ever been concerned with morality?