West's Theory Of Specific Economic Destruction

Summary: AI will specifically destroy jobs created by computers in the first place, preserving 'offline' jobs, while minimally impacting work quality, and preserving gross productivity.

1) The jobs that AI destroys will largely be isolated to many of the same jobs the computers created, facilitated or enabled, 2) The more that workers in a given field were reliant upon computers, the lower the percentage of them will be required to accomplish the same output after AI is deployed; this reduction in demand for workers could be up to 90% in some market segments. 3) When this happens, work quality only suffers slightly; 4) When this happens, productivity is not reduced, and some companies may scale-up fewer workers to surpass previous productivity levels.

The take-away is that jobs that were largely or entirely not dependent on computers (or which predate computer) will be less impacted by the rollout of ML and AI. These jobs include carpenters, police, paramedics, doctors, refuse workers, power linesmen.

This will remain true until corporations push culture if not laws to have androids perform those remaining jobs left to humans (e.g. carpenters, police, paramedics, doctors, refuse workers, power linesmen). At that point, society will debate whether productivity is more important that anthropocentrism and protecting a moralized, industrious, human populations.

Put forth by Zackery West, marketer, in 2024.

reworded and resubmitted

"I'm a USPS door delivery mailman, so, according to West's Theory Of Specific Economic Destruction, my job delivering mail should be fine even if the Postal Service grows more efficient at correctly routing addresses and scheduling delivery drivers."

by Zack West February 18, 2024

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