ChatGPT automates repetitive tasks: who pays the price?

Efficiency is not neutral.

ChatGPT automates repetitive work. That's true. Customer service chatbots. Email drafting. Spreadsheet filling. Data entry. All work an AI can now do. Faster. Cheaper. Without getting sick.

This feels like fortune. Less tedious work. Human workforce shifts to creative roles. Efficiency!

But David Graeber documented something else in Bullshit Jobs. Much of what we do isn't essential. It's bureaucratic theater. Compliance. Reports nobody reads. Meetings that could've been emails.

ChatGPT won't eliminate this work. It will multiply it. Because efficiency in bureaucracy doesn't mean "less bureaucracy." It means we can now generate more defined outputs. More reports. More compliance-documents. More theater.

What ChatGPT will eliminate is work humans do much better. Nuance. Interpretation. Judgment. Those jobs don't disappear into AI. They disappear into cheaper places. Into contractors. Into outsourcing.

McKinsey says AI will automate 70 percent of administrative work. Good. But it doesn't say what happens to the 70 percent of workforce doing this work.

In the Netherlands, with our strong unions and labor market protection, this feels abstract. But in America? In China? It's already happening. Companies fire people. Replace them with AI. Save billions. Workers find other jobs. Or they become unemployed.

This hits the actual Problem. Not that AI is more efficient. But that gains from efficiency aren't shared. If ChatGPT saves a company a million dollars, that million goes to shareholders. Not to the 500 workers who lost their jobs.

This isn't AI criticism. This is economics. Efficiency in capitalism means: much value, few people. That's why we work so hard. Not because we must, but because it's inefficient for companies to let us not work hard.

In iRecord I see the same pattern. We can decentralize identity. That means millions isn't earned by central databases, surveillance, datavending. It means those incomes aren't generated. Why isn't iRecord funded for billions? Because decentralization doesn't generate exponential growth. It generates stability.

Stability doesn't sell.

Sources: McKinsey 'The State of AI' Global Survey (2024); David Graeber, 'Bullshit Jobs' (Simon & Schuster, 2018); Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational projections