Manhattan Workers Prepare for Future Where Only Talking to Robots Pays
Economic forecasters have unveiled a dystopian projection they’re calling “the 99% Unemployment Era,” a near-future scenario where artificial intelligence has automated virtually every job except the ironic position of “prompt engineer”people whose entire career consists of telling AI how to do the jobs that AI eliminated. The prediction, released by a Manhattan think tank that will presumably also be replaced by AI shortly after publishing this report, suggests that by 2045, the only employed humans will be those skilled in asking computers politely to do tasks that humans used to get paid for.
“We’re looking at a future where 99% of the workforce is obsolete,” explained economist Dr. Sarah Martinez from her Columbia University office, which she’s painfully aware will eventually be occupied by an AI professor that never takes sick days or demands tenure. “The only remaining jobs will be prompt engineerspeople who craft the perfect sentences to make AI do everything else. So basically, society’s entire economy will depend on people who are really good at saying ‘please make this better’ to a computer. It’s bleak, but at least it’s consistently absurd.”
The projection has sent shockwaves through New York City’s professional class, where lawyers, doctors, analysts, and consultants are suddenly realizing their expensive educations might be rendered worthless by algorithms that work faster, cheaper, and don’t require health insurance or bathroom breaks. “I spent $300,000 on law school,” lamented Manhattan attorney David Park. “Now I’m taking online courses in ‘Advanced Prompt Engineering’ because apparently my future career is typing ‘draft a contract but make it legally binding and also funny’ into ChatGPT. My parents are thrilled about their return on investment.”
Brooklyn’s tech sector has already begun adapting to the predicted future, with coding bootcamps pivoting from teaching programming to teaching “how to ask AI to program for you.” One bootcamp, formerly called “Learn Python in 12 Weeks,” has rebranded as “Learn to Communicate with Python-Knowing AI in 12 Hours.” Tuition remains suspiciously identical despite the dramatically reduced curriculum. “We’re teaching the jobs of tomorrow,” insisted the bootcamp’s founder. “Tomorrow’s job is essentially being a translator between human needs and AI capabilities. It’s just middle management but for robots. Someone’s got to do it, might as well be you for $15,000.”
The prompt engineering profession has already developed its own complex hierarchy and specializations. Entry-level prompt engineers make around $80,000 annually typing basic requests into AI systems, while senior prompt architectswho craft sophisticated multi-layered prompts that make AI generate entire business strategiescommand salaries exceeding $200,000. “It’s absurd that I make six figures asking a computer to do things,” admitted Brooklyn-based senior prompt engineer Jennifer Walsh. “But it’s also the only job left that AI can’t fully automate because AI isn’t great at understanding what humans actually want. We’re basically professional clarifiers. It’s the ultimate BS job, but someone’s paying for it, so here we are.”
The economic implications of 99% unemployment are staggering and mostly being ignored by policymakers who are too busy arguing about issues that won’t matter when nobody has jobs. Universal Basic Income has been proposed as a solution, though critics note that UBI in a world where only 1% of people work would essentially mean everyone receives government assistance except the prompt engineers, who will presumably be taxed at 99% to fund everyone else. “It’s feudalism but with Wi-Fi,” observed NYU economics professor Dr. Rebecca Torres. “The prompt engineers become the new aristocracy, everyone else is dependent on the system, and we’ve recreated class inequality but this time it’s based entirely on who’s best at typing polite instructions to robots.”
Some optimists argue that new jobs will emerge that we can’t currently imagine, just as previous technological revolutions created unforeseen employment opportunities. Pessimists counter that previous revolutions didn’t involve artificial general intelligence that can learn and adapt faster than humans, making the “new jobs will appear” argument roughly equivalent to “I’m sure the horses found work after cars were invented.” Spoiler: the horses did not find work. The horses became obsolete. We are the horses in this metaphor, and prompt engineering is our last glue factory.
Manhattan workers are responding to the projection with various coping mechanisms: some are aggressively upskilling in prompt engineering; others are pursuing careers in fields they hope AI can’t replicate, like “artisanal pickle-making” and “being authentically human in a way that’s marketable”; and many are simply ignoring the problem and hoping they retire before the robot apocalypse fully materializes. “I’ve got maybe twenty years before retirement,” explained one 45-year-old financial analyst. “If I can just hold out until then, the 99% unemployment era becomes someone else’s problem. That’s basically my entire retirement strategy: outlast the automation timeline.”
The think tank that released the projection has already been criticized for being too optimistic about the 1% employment rate, with some experts suggesting even prompt engineers will eventually be automated by AI that can prompt itself, leading to 100% unemployment except for the handful of people who own the AI companies. But that’s a problem for a different dystopian report, presumably titled “When the Robots Own Everything and Humans Are Literally Useless: A Definitely Not Depressing Analysis of 2050.”
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/the-99-unemployment-era/
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/the-99-unemployment-era/.
By: Annika Steinmann.
