Let’s take the concerns about AI replacing jobs seriously for a minute.  Here’s a good measure that I use to determine the value of a job.  If you have time to play on the internet and are ordering your lunch at 9 AM, you are probably working a job that AI could replace. We don’t create jobs just for people to have.  You need to be doing something with that job.  So, if you have a lot of time to do other things while you’re at your job.  Or you are doing a job that people think can be done from home while you are in your pajamas, your job can be done by AI. I have explained that I don’t worry about AI taking away jobs from people. Instead, I think AI will expand our economy where it’s applied and make humans more efficient.  Our economy will grow proportionally.  And when we are talking about GDP growth of more than 3%, human jobs just aren’t going to get you there.  There are not enough people, and there are not enough births.  There aren’t enough people in the world to fill all the jobs that we currently have.  Measuring a country’s success in job creation is a thing of the past and has been for quite some time.  I understand the anxiety, but really, and you know who you are, if you aren’t very busy at your job, then you are doing a job that AI can replace, one that doesn’t show up late or call off.  Or bring in a doctor’s note looking for an excused absence.  AI works all night and doesn’t require overtime.  It doesn’t get out of focus on the topics being worked on.  It simply does work, and that is essentially what economic value is measured by: the amount of work required to drive economic activity. 

It is baffling to hear what people who are supposed to be smart think would happen with the new administrative state’s view of the world.  Even this past week, I have heard some ridiculous comments from people who are supposed to be experts on labor practices.  The notion that the world should stop because so-and-so has called off is a preposterous idea.  And the general idea is that work is something that should be regarded as valuable.  I continue to hear what I’ve listened to all my life about Mondays, when people say stupid things like, “can’t wait to Friday.”  Or, “TGIF,” associating sadness with Monday mornings, where people have to return from time off and report to jobs that they hate.  And they rebel against those jobs with frequent call-offs and expect their job to be there for them once they’ve done all their leisure activities, as if we are supposed to build our lives around being off work.  Hey, AI never complains.  It does work, and a lot of it, and is, in general, far better than humans doing those same jobs.  It is much more reliable.  So, are we supposed to avoid using AI and insist on using a human being who is much less efficient at a task, to preserve the feelings of some lazy slug who is on their third marriage and has kids by all different spouses, who call off work every time the sun is out?  Because that’s the reality of the labor market.  However, it’s not just the typical slugs we’re talking about.  It’s just as common for white-collar jobs.  And you can see it while visiting any city.

It is astonishing to visit places like Washington, D.C., where traffic is heavy from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.  Everyone is going to work, and the parking garages fill up fast.  But by noon, those parking garages start to open up because people are not working full 8-hour days.  They are going home after just a few hours in the office, and in many cases, they are not working even five days a week.  We saw this mentality clearly during COVID, where medical professionals insisting on government-imposed lockdowns had no connection to the amount of work that needed to be done globally.  Labor being a measure of productivity, most of the COVID planners thought that the world could all stay home and only communicate with each other via Teams meetings.  And we’re talking about people we think of as brilliant.  They believed that the way to get to a zero-emission world was for all humans to stay home and not drive anywhere.  If you have ever attended one of these climate conferences, such as those held in Rio or Davos, you will hear these same types of people microplanning mass society with the belief that humans could all stay home and visit parks built in their backyards, rather than traveling across the nation to visit a place like Yellowstone.  The same people who are now complaining that AI is going to take away human jobs are the same people who have tried to keep human beings from leaving their houses. I say that, knowing a great deal about the Agenda 21 goals of sustainability and how those misguided ideas infiltrated community planning. 

I have a lot of political friends who have to deal with Agenda 21 fantasies straight from the messed-up minds of the United Nations.  These kids learn a variety of skills in school, then they get hired into a township planning office, where they bring with them designs to build parks, roundabouts, and bike paths.  I live in an area where all these things have happened in abundance, and I look at them in wonder.  Why should people have so much free time to spend in all these parks and have the time to ride a bike on a bike path?  Where do the people who frequently visit there work?  Even with online gaming, many kids are playing those games 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, when they should be learning skills at the local McDonald’s drive-thru.  However, we have many people who have been running our society, teaching it all the wrong things about work.  So if you have time to walk on a bike path all the time, or sit around in a park looking at nature.  Or, you order lunch three hours early, and you have time to play on the internet all day at a white-collar job. You are working in a job that could and should be replaced by AI, which can do it better because it has no time for leisure.  When traveling through Europe, it’s always a source of amusement to observe their work ethic, which is characterized by very few hours per week, excessively long vacations, and an abundance of them.  When dealing with a large company these days, they often adopt a European view of work, which can be devastating to productivity.  I’d rather not waste my time trying to get someone to come to work and convince them to be productive while they’re there.  I’d rather replace their job with AI so that the things that need to be done can get done.  We don’t create jobs for people’s convenience.  We do it because we need work done, and people should work hard to do it, rather than complaining about it.  And we must admit to ourselves that most of the opinions people have had about work were incorrect.  And they led our society down the wrong path, introducing all the bad ideas about it.  To correct that behavior while expanding the economy, AI is a valuable asset, and I find it very useful because it is always available and never complains.  There are many things that I do that AI could never replace.  So I don’t look over my back at it, worried it will replace my value. Instead, I see it as helpful because it allows me to do the kinds of things that I’m good at, and to do more of them.  Rather than waste time on stupid stuff.  But if you are looking over your shoulder at AI replacing you.  Then that’s probably because you aren’t doing anything important enough to be replaced so easily.  And that is your problem. 

Rich Hoffman

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