Answering my own question, most of it likely flows from THE SURVELiLLANCE STATE. This used to be thought of as abusive practices by for-profit corporations, aka "Big Data" But increasingly, the private "Big Data" is commingled with authoritarian government initiatives, which is essentially the definition of fascism.

We can look at Flock as one example of this, a private company that has become embedded with thousands of police agencies around the country.

Much of the "gee whiz" generative AI doesn't require a data center at all. Just today, I am upgrading a music production tool that has major AI content, and it doesn't require online access at all. Many companies (like Canva e.g.) will try to hook customers into AI cloud features in order to lock in a monthly subscription model. But most of that won't require huge amounts of processing power.

The AI apps that require the power are the ones that seek to track us and monitor our every move. And this really has little connection to staffing levels.

This is obvious to me at least. That (big) money is afraid. Afraid of instability caused primarily by climate change - crop loss, etc. Big money is actually terrified and trying to get ahead of the game by having a total information state. That is the only way they can maintain control of the corrupt rent seeking economy and crony favoritism that has made them fabulously rich and impoverished a good number of us. It's about surveillance and any other supplied rationale is bullshit. Wait until the midwest has multiple successive years of crop failure. The sad thing is, the merely affluent who see what is going on and are likely to fall in line because they don't want to lose what they have. I hope they don't succeed.

in the job market as some skills either became obsolete or lost cost-effectiveness. However, new jobs and careers were invariably created that provided continuous employment opportunities. I expect the current AI phenomenon to follow the same pattern.

And, unfortunately for a while at least, skilled senior researchers and design oriented project leads.
But the greatest job loss really should be in Senior Management, especially money management and market strategists. AI can take just as many risks as they do, and the probability is that risks can be handled more efficiently by AI with less ego involvement. But rich guys feel they just can't be replaced, so that's probably not going to happen.
Middle management isn't necessarily a big loss, either.

It’s coding. Business analyst. Planning. Inventory. Some jobs go away and some are reclassified to manage the AI and correct anomalies.

Those that don’t embrace AI will be replaced by AI. Use AI to gain efficiency or be left behind.

Is it like plumbers and bakers?

Which leads me to the joke that it must be an AI article.

that is good for organizing information, not determining truth. It is biased toward "gassing up" a person and reinforcing human behavior through sycophantic output in response to queries.

The usefulness of the technology is directly correlated to user intelligence. If you're susceptible to propaganda, don't use generative A.I.

It's also good for non-critical tasks where wide-scale scans of the Internet can be used to research basic data. Again, it is not a replacement for human verification, creativity, or insight.

It is useful for very basic tasks that are time consuming in my job.

You can personalize your A.I. tool by giving it instructions.

Here are my customization guidelines for the generative A.I. tools I use to organize information. I audit it myself and by using Chat GPT and Gemini to verify each against the other.