The anthropologist David Graeber defines “bullshit jobs” as employment without meaning or purpose, work that should be automated but for reasons of bureaucracy or status or inertia is not. These AI jobs are their bizarro twin: work that people want to automate, and often think is already automated, yet still requires a human stand-in. The jobs have a purpose; it’s just that workers often have no idea what it is.
Read for a class on machine learning - a really sobering look into what actually goes on in the development of AI/machine learning models. The zeitgeist tends to focus on AI replacing jobs or costing energy, but I think it's very worth thinking about the human cost from the people who power AI. Has an absolute gut-punch of an ending.