AI won’t wipe out white-collar jobs. Spend a day in a bureaucracy, and you’ll see why: 80% of the work is politics and busywork, 20% is actual work done by a few. Most folks are stuck filling out forms for a $350 web service, waiting weeks for a work plan approval, or taking mandatory carbon footprint training. (All real examples from my job.) I ran a small international research project. Months to sign the protocol, months to set up payments. Paying globally from a Canadian university? Nightmare. The project succeeded by dumb luck: one guy out of five did all the work for 20% of the budget. The rest? Poof, gone after getting paid. Progress hinges on a minority with agency. We never needed Joe to run security checks on HTML. But now Joe’s got the job, good luck firing him. At best, AI empowers the few who can dodge red tape to do more. That’s the short-term hope. Long-term predictions? Spare me unless you called ChatGPT in 2016 with receipts.