Why are we giving AI the best jobs?

Perth Now

02-05-2025

Did you hear about the Sydney radio station that used an AI-generated bot to host a show for six months?
That's not a set-up for a joke but I wish it was.
'If your day is looking a bit bleh, let Thy and CADA be the energy and vibe to get your mood lifted,' radio station CADA urged listeners. Turns out Thy was ONLY 'energy and vibe' because she doesn't actually exist in the physical sense. Well, she kind of exists. The station cloned the voice of a woman who works on their finance team. The real Thy is sitting at a desk, doing the accounts. Her robot clone is spinning tracks. Surely there is something very wrong when we assign the robots the fun jobs.
AI is going to change the world. We can't stop it now — it would be like putting the toothpaste back in the tube. But before things go too much further, perhaps we need to have a bit of a think about which jobs we want it to take over. While us humans are still in charge surely it's not too late to steer things in the right direction.
Because radio host is a cool job. Lots of people want that gig. Why let a robot do it ? We need to give the robots jobs that no one wants. Here are some roles in society I think AI could take over and leave humanity the richer for it.
Royalty: There isn't much good about being a royal. You are either destined to live a life of stoic misery in a gilded cage or you attempt to break free and suffer an outpouring of hatred towards your family. We need to get rid of the royals. Not with a guillotine. Just stick them in a semi-detached somewhere in middle England and let them get jobs at Tesco or working at solving murders in quaint villages while dancing around the maypole or whatever it is people do over there. We can fill the seemingly insatiable need for royal family gossip with an AI-generated monarchy. A kindly king who keeps bees. A beautiful princess with an expensively dull wardrobe. A prince who has weird but endearing hobbies. Of course, to keep things juicy we will need to generate a low-level scandal every six to 12 months. But really, an AI-generated royal family seems much more humane than what we currently have.
Declutterers: My apologies to anyone who makes their living out of going to people's houses and asking them if all five spatulas in the second draw down spark joy, but I really feel this is an opening for AI. Because when you are a robot nothing sparks joy! They can chuck it all out. Forget Swedish Death Cleaning, this is Not Even Truly Alive Minimalism. And when they are done they can program your phone to block Temu.
Child stars: If you have watched the recent exploits of former child stars JoJo Siwa and Justin Bieber, it's difficult to avoid the sense you are witnessing a slowly unfolding car crash. People just shouldn't be that famous before their prefrontal cortex has fully developed. Next time the world needs a precocious nine-year-old pop star, just get AI on the job. That way they can stay nine forever. They can pump out cutesy pop hits for several generations of fans, without ever having to grow up and into slightly damaged adults.
Used correctly, AI could do great things. Just leave the energy and vibes to those of us with a pulse.