Writing is born to count goods

In Egypt, small labels from tomb U-j at Abydos record goods and where they came from. In Uruk, in Mesopotamia, the first tablets count rations of grain, fish and animals. Writing is born as accounting, and the scribe becomes the first office profession: cognitive work that AI would begin to do 5,000 years later.

Source: Wikipedia, Egyptian hieroglyphs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art