AI makes us turkeys getting fat

I keep getting amazing job suggestions on LinkedIn from big companies paying big money. It’s not even a scam. I could work remotely as a “Creative/ Literary Writer” earning the mind-boggling sum of up to $150 hourly.

I could make R2 500 per hour; I could be a millionaire in four months. What am I doing, scratching out this column for chicken feed?

Well, let’s discuss the turkey effect. Every year, thousands of turkeys are fed and have all their needs met in what appears – to the turkeys – to be a system built only to their advantage.

Come Christmas Eve, the turkeys are more nurtured than they’ve been before, and then, boom… Christmas dinner. I refuse to be a turkey. Because – surprise – no-one suddenly built a factory providing high-paying jobs for arts graduates.

Rather, this lucrative writerly work entails reviewing AI-generated novels, short stories and plays for literary quality, and refining them.

My role would be to hone artificial intelligence, to train my new robot overlords, to work myself out of a job. Such is the current reality.

My friend’s fella once had his pick of tech jobs, but he’s been unemployed since January after teaching the bots to do what he does. He’s not alone.

Last month, Meta announced it was getting rid of 10% of its workforce, or 8 000 people, on top of the 2 000 it already fired earlier this year, and is not filling thousands of previously advertised positions.

Chief turkey farmer Mark Zuckerberg talks instead of a “major AI acceleration”, while using software to track his human employees’ computer interactions to enhance machine learning.

Meanwhile, on the next turkey farm, over at Amazon, they’re making more money than ever before, cutting 30 000 jobs for AI “automation”.

At Microsoft, chief executive of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, said “white-collar work where you’re sitting down at a computer … lawyer… accountant… project manager… marketing… most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”

The progress made is “eye-watering” he said and he’s right, because AI is an existential risk ending in human tears. So, no thank you, this turkey won’t be voting for an early Christmas