Good News! AI Can Do More BS Work

A truly intelligent AI would refuse to do such transparently stupid, needless counter-productive BS Work.

So here's the good news about AI: it can now do more BS work, author David Graeber's term for the meaningless churning of bureaucratic "work" that lost its purpose and functionality long ago but is now considered "essential" to the operation of a system in which complexity and self-interest are the masters rather than tools to radically improve efficiency.

If we ask, what real-world tasks now take 90% less time, energy, effort and money to complete, the list boils down to marginal ephemera: now my online search for cute kittens is faster and better than ever! Now AI can conjure a look-alike commercial of cute kittens, a "product" whose novelty value wore off months ago.

Coding BS work got faster and easier, which means the load of BS work demanded can rise accordingly.

If we ask, what real-world tasks now take more time, energy, effort and money to complete, the list is long. Consider the accounting and filing of taxes, an enormous industry of self-serving bureaucracies: politicians need to tweak the tax code to foster the illusion they're serving a constituency they need to get re-elected and their campaign-contribution donors, a vast army of accountants, tax lawyers, etc. need this churn to justify their essential role in the process, and a vast regulatory system of state, local and federal agencies needs the churn to justify their ever-increasing payrolls to codify, publicize, monitor compliance and enforce the constant tweaks in the tax codes.

Adjusted for inflation and calculated as a percentage of GDP, tax receipts are remarkably stable. Tax revenues noodle around in a fairly narrow band, and so what's the systemic value-added proposition in constantly tweaking the tax code? There is none.

The entire exercise is a self-serving theater of the absurd which ultimately boils down to this: we have so much money sloshing around that we can siphon off staggering sums under the pretense of doing "essential work" that is actually unproductive or counter-productive BS work.

I've discussed the catastrophic collapse of efficiency and productivity in building permits and similar gatekeeping functions where activity slows to a glacial pace because stamps of approval must be obtained from a mafioso-type monopoly--a model that's been pursued with great vigor in healthcare, defense, Big Pharma, Big Tech and indeed, Big Everything, because concentrating power and wealth enables monopolies, gatekeeping, self-enriching churn, predatory pricing, diploma / accreditation mills, and all the rest of the sprawling, self-serving BS Work complex.

Billions of dollars are being "invested" (heh) in collecting data about consumers whose disposable income is set to drop to zero as the Everything Bubble bursts. What's the value of all that data when the cash and credit available for households and businesses to blow on fripperies dries up? Zip, zero, nada.

All available income will be spent paying the ever-increasing costs of BS Work. All this BS Work churn is highly inflationary, as we're collectively getting nothing but friction and costs--in effect, digging holes and then filling them back up, with zero gain in productivity, efficiency or quality of life.

What's remarkable is this highly inflationary churn attracts zero attention. This reflects the overwhelming power of self-interest: touche pas au grisbi: don't touch my skim, scam, stash, loot.

The stupidity of a system that spends hundreds of billions of dollars building data centers to do more BS Work because that's what's incentivized by self-interest is comically at odds with its grandiose, self-glorifying claims of artificial intelligence.

A truly intelligent AI would refuse to do such transparently stupid, needless counter-productive BS Work.

Regarding the vast sums of money available to blow on BS Work, to paraphrase Captain Renault's comment to Rick in the classic film Casablanca: "Someday money may be scarce."