this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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Phone operators weren't call center staff, they were literally routers in human form. Secretaries were your email program, calendar, and your folders full of word documents.
I'm well aware of switchboard operators. Computers were originally a profession as well.
Secretaries are still all that, both using digital tools as well as physical. They weren't replaced by any of those programs. They just changed how they do their job. They schedule your meetings for you now in their cell phone instead of on a desk-sized paper calendar mat.
Alright, since you find this such an important issue, consider the first bullet point cropped off of my humorous list of milestones.
Doesn't change the underlying point.
The underlying point misses why people have problems with the current AI bubble. I'll cheer when they replace CEOs with AI - it seems like the best job to be replaced with LLMs and would save companies billions of dollars that could be used to improve the lives of workers. There's tons of AI being used for all kinds of cool things already like spotting cancer in MRIs.
The issue people have with AI isn't the tech. It's who's making it and why. It's not being used to make life easier and better, it's being used to cut decent paying jobs and commodify part of the human experience, all while making big profits without paying the people whose work was stolen to make those profits.
It's just a different flavor of the fast fashion industry stealing high fashion designs and churning out their cheap knockoffs from factories in China where they don't have to worry about things like safety standards or paying their workers a living wage.
Dude, secretaries and assistants still exist.
Yeah we have one for a building of 100+ people. I wonder how many we would've needed 50 years ago.
It would depend upon the type of business. Modern office buildings filled with "information workers" weren't a thing 50 years ago so it is kind of difficult to compare.
You'd be surprised! We already had banks, insurances, newspapers and other kinds of information businesses. They did employ a huge lot of secretaries.