There is a fundamental contradiction in the panic about AI job theft that reveals the actual nature of the political economy of automation and labour discipline. The contradiction is this: AI doesn’t really work, and yet AI appears to be able to do many jobs well enough that decision makers are cutting jobs that are apparently no longer needed because of the AI.

There’s another fundamental contradiction in capitalism itself. It is simultaneously supposed to be highly efficient at allocating resources due to the profit motive, yet also produces an endless amount of work that achieves no end, and I don't mean overproduction, I mean jobs that the workers themselves believe to not be necessary. David Graeber has called these Bullshit Jobs.

The contradiction is resolved once we understand that what bullshit jobs produce is not profit but stability. A bullshit job is designed to make the worker sympathize with the boss in structural and psychological ways. It shores up the state of what Mark Fisher calls “capitalist realism” and undermines solidarity and ultimately collective action.

So where does AI come in? There are two dimensions to the effect AI has on labour. Let’s start with the automation of work that needs to be done. Then, the automation of bullshit jobs. The TL;DR here is that trying to automate work that needs to be done gets that work pushed onto precarious gig workers, and automating work that doesn’t need to be done produces instability.

Part of this is complicated by the various factions of capital. Not all managers and CEOs (call them decision makers) are cynical readers of political economy but they serve the logic nonetheless. Most of them believe their bullshit. So your manager probably genuinely thinks they’re automating a process by laying off the graphic design team. But since the machine doesn’t work and the work still needs to be done, what they’re actually doing is disciplining labour.

What happens to work that needs doing?

The disciplinary effect of AI comes from introducing a temporary crisis in production that will be solved by those same workers joining the “precariat". The crisis is due to the essential nature of the work. Note that at no point does the AI ever become actually capable of doing the work. Its purpose is to fool credulous decision makers and excuse cynical ones, not make art or do anything actually useful whatsoever.

Ironically, this labour disciplining will improve profitability for a while (though the low wages of these precarious workers will inevitably cause a demand crisis). But this will happen because of breaking labour power and not because of any apparent automation gains.

What happens to the work that doesn't need doing?

Next, there’s the issue of bullshit jobs. Since these jobs are really just people pretending to be busy and writing lengthy summaries and analyses and so on that nobody ever actually reads or uses, the AI can do a passable job automating these tasks. But the problem is that the purpose of the bullshit job is not the work done by the worker. The purpose of this type of job is to bribe a portion of the population and convince them that the way the economy functions serves them too. They get a cushy job where they can look down on manual labour and receive compensation high enough to afford some treats, trips, and a sense of security. This is load-bearing bullshit for capitalism.

As these people get pushed out by the credulous factions of capital, the importance of the bribe will become obvious. I expect this cohort of labourers to quickly organize, form a coalition with the precariat, and constitute a social movement effective enough to demand concessions from large employers and the state. At this point, just like with the New Deal of the 1930s, these workers will likely abandon their coalition with the precariat and (unlike the New Deal) go back to some form of bullshit job. 

After this, the true effect of all this AI speculation and forced adoption will become clear. Things will stabilize but with a larger and more deniable underclass than before, with just enough people raised out of abject misery to ensure stability. We will have foreclosed on any revolutionary change. We will be weaker, less able to resist future shocks of this nature, and our economy will be less productive so we will accept even more austerity.

This goal is the rational end state of investing entire national economies into the LLM. I think it's probably inevitable at this point because even among the people who can see that AI is bullshit, we lack any kind of accurate analysis and ability to bring together a mass movement behind that analysis.