CONCEPT

Precarity of Trajectory

Boltanski’s typology extended to the AI age—the specific insecurity of occupying a role whose future is structurally determined to contract rather than expand, whose value is defined by the technology’s current limitations rather than by the worker’s enduring capabilities.

All precarity is not the same, and the precarity of the AI transition requires its own typology to be properly understood and effectively addressed. The precarity of trajectory is the condition of occupying a role defined by what the machine cannot yet do—a role whose half-life is measured in development cycles rather than decades. The prompt engineer, the AI trainer, the human-in-the-loop specialist: each role is genuine, each requires genuine skill and genuine expertise, and each is structurally positioned on a trajectory toward contraction because the technology whose current limitations created the role is being actively improved by the same organizations that employ the worker. This is qualitatively different from traditional professional precarity, which involves uncertainty about whether one’s role will persist. The precarity of trajectory involves near-certainty that the role will not persist in its current form, because the elimination of the limitation that created it is the explicit goal of the system the worker

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