CONCEPT
New AI Roles
The emerging job categories — prompt engineer, AI trainer, human-in-the-loop specialist, alignment researcher — that reproduce projective-city precarity while performing the appearance of empowerment.
New AI roles name the emerging category of jobs organized around AI systems: prompt engineers who craft inputs, AI trainers who shape outputs, human-in-the-loop specialists who correct errors, alignment researchers who address safety, AI ethicists who articulate principles. These roles are frequently presented as evidence that AI creates more work than it eliminates and as examples of the new opportunities the transition affords. Read through Boltanski's framework, they reveal a more complicated pattern: they are the projective city's latest instantiation, incorporating the vocabulary of technical sophistication while reproducing the structural precarity that has characterized platform-mediated work for a generation.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Each role exhibits a characteristic pattern. The title sounds technical and specialized, suggesting durable expertise. The requirements are in fact loose enough that workers can be replaced rapidly by others who have picked up comparable skills. The compensation reflects the glamour of AI more than the durability of the skill: early entrants are paid well, but the premium erodes as the