IIUC the calculation of GDP doesn’t factor in whether the produced goods serve a human need - the system can in theory continue to optimize for ever-increasing GDP while every human on earth starves to death.

There’s an old joke I remember about economists and the GDP.

Two economists are walking through the jungle and come across a gigantic pile of lion scat. One turns to the other and said I’ll pay you 100$ to eat a bite of that shit.
Being an economists and 100$ being worth a lot, the guy eats the shit and gets paid.
A little while later they come across a pile of rhino dung. The now richer economist turns to the first and offers 100$ for him to take a bite out of this pile. 100$ is again a lot of money so he does it and eats the shit.
As they’re walking along, both picking their teeth, one turns to the other and asks “did we both just eat shit for nothing?” And the other days “of course not, now the GDP of the jungle has increased by 200$!”

Your analogy to mechanical systems are exactly where the breakdown to comparison with the human brain occurs, our brains are not like that, we don’t only have the blocks of text loaded into us, sure we only learn what we get exposed to but that doesn’t mean we can’t think of things we haven’t learned about.
The article I linked talks about the separation between the formation of thoughts and those thoughts being translated into words for linguistics.

The fact that you “don’t even know why the how the brain creates an articulated spoken word is even relevant here” speaks volumes to how much you understand the human brain, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence actually understanding the words it generates and the implications of thoughts behind the words and not just guessing which word comes next based on other words, the meanings of which are irrelevant.

I can listen to a song long enough to learn the words, that doesn’t mean I know what the song is about.

Funny to me how defensive you got so quick, accusing of not reading the linked paper before even reading it yourself.

The reason OP was so rude is that your very premise of “what is the brain doing if not statistical text prediction” is completely wrong and you don’t even consider it could be. You cite a TV show as a source of how it might be. Your concept of what artificial intelligence is comes from media and not science, and is not founded in reality.

The brain uses words to describe thoughts, the words are not actually the thoughts themselves.

https://advances.massgeneral.org/neuro/journal.aspx?id=1096

Think about small children who haven’t learned language yet, do those brains still do “stastical text prediction” despite not having words to predict?

What about dogs and cats and other “less intelligent” creatures, they don’t use any words but we still can teach them to understand ideas. You don’t need to utter a single word, not even a sound, to train a dog to sit. Are they doing “statistical text prediction” ?

You must work in a role where your input is valued and you have a degree of autonomy, your calendar is a collaboration tool to work with other people.

Most jobs aren’t like that, and bosses will use your calendar to micromanage you instead of supporting you