Students and employers often complain that college does not prepare them for the real world of filling jobs and this complaint has some merit. But what is the real world of jobs like for most workers? Professor David Graeber got considerable media attention when he published his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. He claims that millions of people are working jobs they know are meaningless and unnecessary. Researcher Simon Walo decided to test Graeber’s theory and found that his investigation supported Graeber’s view. While Graeber’s view can be debated, it is reasonable to believe that some jobs are BS all the time and all jobs are BS some of the time. Thus, if educators are to prepare students for working in the real world, they must prepare them for the BS of the workplace. AI can prove useful here.
In an optimistic sci-fi view of the future, AI exists to relieve humans of the dreadful four Ds of bad jobs: the Dangerous, the Degrading, the Dirty, and the Dull. In a bright future, general AI would assist, but not replace, humans in creative and scientific endeavors. In dystopian sci-fi views of the AI future, AI enslaves or exterminates humanity. In dystopia lite, a few humans use AI to make life worse for many humans, such as by replacing humans with AI in good and rewarding jobs. Much of the effort in AI development seems aimed at making this a reality.
As an example, it is feared that AI will put writers and artists out of work, so when the Hollywood writers went on strike, they wanted protection from being replaced by AI. They succeeded in this goal, but there remains a reasonable question about how great the threat of AI is in terms of its being able to replace humans in jobs humans want to do. Fortunately for humans doing creative and meaningful work, AI is not very good at these tasks. As Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor have argued, AI of this sort seems to be most useful at doing useless things. But this can be useful for workers and educators should train students to use AI to do these useless things. This might seem a bit crazy but makes perfect sense in our economic reality.
Some jobs are useless, and all jobs have useless tasks. Although his view can be challenged, Graeber came up with three categories of useless jobs. His “flunkies” category consists of people paid to make the rich and important look more rich and more important. This can be expanded to include all decorative minions. “Goons” are people filling positions existing only because a competitor company created similar jobs. Finally, there are the “box tickers”, which can be refined to cover jobs workers see as useless but also produce work whose absence would have no meaningful effect on the world.
It must be noted that what is perceived as useless is a matter of values and will vary between persons and in different contexts. To use a silly example, imagine the Florida state legislature mandated that all state universities send in a monthly report in the form of a haiku. Each month, someone will need to create and email the haiku. This task seems useless. But imagine that if a school fails to comply, they lose $1 million in funding. This makes the task useful for the school as a means of protecting their funding. Fortunately, AI can easily complete this useless useful task.
As a serious example, suppose a worker must write reports for management based on bullet points given in presentations. Management, of course, never reads the reports and they are thus useless but required by company policy. While a seemingly rational solution is to eliminate the reports, that is not how bureaucracies usually operate in the “real world.” Fortunately, AI can make the worker’s task easier: they can use AI to transform the bullet points into a report and use the saved time for more meaningful tasks (or viewing social media). Management can also use AI to summarize the report into bullet points. While it would seem more rational to eliminate the reports, this is not how the real world usually works. But what should educators do with AI in their classrooms in the context of useless tasks and jobs?
While this will need to vary from class to class, relevant educators should consider a general overview of jobs and task categories in terms of usefulness and the ability of AI to do these jobs and tasks. Faculty could then identify the likely useless jobs and useless tasks their students will probably do in the real world. They can then consider how these tasks can be done using AI. This will allow them to create lessons and assignments to give students the skills to use AI to complete useless tasks quickly and with minimal effort. This can allow workers to spend more time on useful work, assuming their jobs have any such tasks.
In closing, my focus has been on using AI for useless tasks. Teaching students to use AI for useful tasks is another subject entirely and while not covered here is certainly worthy of consideration. And here is an AI generated haiku:
Eighty percent rise
FAMU students excel
In their learning’s ligh