BTN News: When Brad Wang first stepped into the fast-paced world of the tech industry, he was mesmerized by how Silicon Valley had transformed the dull office environment into a playground filled with game rooms, nap pods, and hiking trails. Yet, behind this façade of luxury, Wang couldn’t shake the feeling of a deeper emptiness. Despite hopping from one software engineering role to another, he found himself toiling away on projects that seemed to lack any real purpose. One stark example was his 15-month stint at Google, where he worked on a project that managers knew would never see the light of day. “It’s like baking a cake just to throw it in the trash,” Wang remarked.
This sense of purposelessness in work is far from a new phenomenon. For decades, countless workers have shown up to jobs that left them pondering: What’s the point? The pandemic brought this feeling to the forefront, with tens of thousands of people flocking to the subreddit r/antiwork to vent about mindless jobs and, in many cases, work in general. The corporate office and its never-ending paperwork can reduce even seemingly desirable jobs to soul-crushing monotony.
The late radical anthropologist David Graeber captured this sentiment in a 2013 essay and later expanded on it in a book. He argued that the economist John Maynard Keynes’ vision of a 15-hour workweek never materialized because humans have invented millions of jobs so pointless that even those who do them can’t justify their existence. A study by Dutch economists Robert Dur and Max van Lent supported this, revealing that a quarter of the workforce in wealthy countries believes their job is potentially useless. If workers find their jobs demoralizing and devoid of societal value, what’s the rationale for keeping these roles?
This question becomes even more pressing as artificial intelligence rapidly advances. According to a recent estimate by Goldman Sachs, generative AI could eventually automate tasks equivalent to around 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, many of which are in office roles like administration and middle management.
When we think about a future where technology replaces human workers, two extremes often come to mind: a boost in productivity for companies and a catastrophe for humans rendered obsolete. However, there’s a middle ground to consider, where AI eliminates tasks that workers themselves find meaningless and even psychologically degrading. If this were to happen, would these workers actually be better off?
AI excels at pattern recognition, meaning it’s particularly adept at repeatedly applying the same solution to a problem. Unlike humans, who can make mistakes when tasks become monotonous, chatbots don’t experience fatigue.
Graeber identified categories of “bullshit jobs,” including “flunkies,” who exist solely to make their superiors look more important; “goons,” whose roles exist only because competing companies have similar positions; and “bureaucrats,” jobs that even the employees themselves consider useless, producing work that could disappear tomorrow with no real impact on the world.
One prime candidate for automation among these categories is the executive assistant. IBM already allows users to create their own AI assistants, and Gmail has features like auto-reply that can draft responses for you. Kelly Eden, a 45-year-old writer who supplemented her income by writing emails for businesspeople, was recently informed by one of her clients that he would start using ChatGPT instead of paying her 50 cents per word.
Telemarketing, often seen as a “goon” job by Graeber’s standards, is another area ripe for AI takeover. Workers frequently find themselves selling products they know customers neither want nor need. Chatbots are well-suited for this task because they aren’t concerned with whether the job is fulfilling or if customers are rude. Companies like AT&T are already using AI to script customer service calls, leading some employees to feel like they’re training their own replacements.
Even software engineering, once considered a prestigious and meaningful profession, can drift into “bureaucrat” territory. Wang, for example, felt this way when he was writing code destined never to be used. In his view, the only purpose of this work was to help his managers secure promotions. He’s acutely aware that much of this type of work could be automated.
Regardless of whether these jobs provide a sense of purpose, they do offer reliable salaries. Many of the meaningless jobs that AI might soon take over have traditionally served as entry points for people seeking opportunities and training, acting as accelerators of social mobility: paralegals, secretaries, assistants. Economists worry that when these jobs disappear, the ones that replace them will come with lower wages, fewer opportunities for advancement—and even less purpose.
Historically, technology has offset job losses by creating new industries and opportunities. The advent of personal computing, for instance, eliminated around 3.5 million jobs in the U.S., only to give rise to an enormous industry that fueled many others.
Similarly, many workers displaced by AI from their purposeless jobs may find new roles emerging from the automation process. Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired and an author of several books on technology, remains somewhat optimistic about the impact of AI on meaningless work. He believes that workers might start asking deeper questions about what constitutes a good job.
Kelly outlines a cycle in the psychology of job automation. Stage 1: “A robot/computer can’t do what I do.” Stage 3: “Okay, it can do everything I do, except it needs me when it gets stuck, which happens often.” Stage 5: “Wow, that was a job no human should have been doing, but what about me?” The worker then finds a new, more stimulating occupation, bringing the cycle full circle to Stage 7: “I’m glad a robot can’t do what I do.”
“The species-wide identity crisis that AI is promoting is actually a good thing,” Kelly suggests.
Some experts believe that the crises triggered by automation could lead people to pursue jobs with greater social value. Dutch historian Rutger Bregman has initiated a movement of “moral ambition” in the Netherlands. Workers feeling stuck in meaningless jobs gather periodically to encourage each other to pursue more worthwhile endeavors. There’s even a fellowship program that pays 24 morally ambitious individuals to switch to jobs focused on fighting the tobacco industry or promoting sustainable meats.
MIT labor economist David Autor, who specializes in technology and employment, suggests that jobs automated by AI will require “AI babysitters.” Companies will hire humans to edit the work produced by AI, whether it’s legal reviews or marketing copy, and monitor the AI’s tendency to “hallucinate.” Some people will benefit, particularly in roles where AI handles easy, repetitive tasks, leaving humans to tackle more complex and variable projects.
However, in many cases, humans may find themselves sifting through mountains of AI-generated content looking for errors. Supervising monotonous work is unlikely to be more fulfilling than doing it. “If AI does the work and people are just there to oversee the AI, they’ll be incredibly bored,” Autor warns.
Ironically, some of the jobs most at risk of immediate AI takeover are those rooted in empathy and human connection, according to Autor. Machines don’t tire of feigning empathy and can endure endless customer abuse. New roles created for humans may lose this emotional challenge, but they’ll also lose the joy that comes with it. For instance, as self-checkout systems become more prevalent in supermarkets, employees who once enjoyed meaningful conversations with customers now primarily encounter frustrated individuals struggling with the technology.
Even tech optimists like Kelly acknowledge that purposeless jobs are likely here to stay. After all, the lack of purpose, according to Graeber’s definition, is in the eye of the worker.
Many people have a complicated relationship with their work. Given enough time doing the same tasks, they may start to feel frustrated—by being small cogs in large systems, by following orders that make no sense, by the monotony. These grievances might arise even as they take on new roles, while the robot marches on through its cycles.
Some will seek new roles; others may try to reshape the irritating parts of their jobs and find meaning in encouraging their colleagues. Some might pursue broader economic solutions to work-related problems. Graeber viewed universal basic income as an answer; OpenAI’s Sam Altman has also advocated for experiments with guaranteed income.
AI magnifies and complicates the social issues surrounding work, but it’s not a reset button or a cure-all. While technology will undoubtedly transform jobs, it won’t erase the complex feelings people have toward their work.
Wang anticipates that automating meaningless jobs will only make engineers more creative in their quest for promotions. “These jobs exist because they sell a vision,” he said. “I fear this is a problem that can’t be automated away.”
