I have friends at companies that used to do BS jobs. Then, AI came in and took over the BS, and now they're doing real, meaningful work. One friend was told her team (3) would be eliminated once AI took over. Now that the AI automated the teams' job, they do proper finance work, and they've expanded the team to 5 people. Turns out the limiting rate was a bottleneck in the paperwork that the AI eliminated, meaning they can do proper forecasting analysis more effectively. Each additional person increases the set of product markets they can effectively forecast for. With effective forecasts they can time the market better, and they've already saved the company significant money — way more than their salaries, combined.
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The TLDR is not that interesting, but here you go...
1) BS jobs, in the sense outlined by Graeber (the BS jobs essay guy), proliferated due to easy money/low interest rates
2) money is not so easy anymore
3) AI is taking our jobs
4) BS jobs may actually not be going away, just shifting, e.g. from "culture coordinator" to "AI ethics reviewer"
I have friends at companies that used to do BS jobs. Then, AI came in and took over the BS, and now they're doing real, meaningful work. One friend was told her team (3) would be eliminated once AI took over. Now that the AI automated the teams' job, they do proper finance work, and they've expanded the team to 5 people. Turns out the limiting rate was a bottleneck in the paperwork that the AI eliminated, meaning they can do proper forecasting analysis more effectively. Each additional person increases the set of product markets they can effectively forecast for. With effective forecasts they can time the market better, and they've already saved the company significant money — way more than their salaries, combined.