Posted on 05/14/2026 10:27:29 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 ignited the artificial-intelligence boom—and elicited a chorus of warnings from AI bosses of an impending jobs apocalypse. Never mind that they have reason to talk up the disruptiveness of their products, or that rich-world employment is near all-time highs—the dark message has landed. Seven in ten Americans think AI will make it harder for people to find work; nearly a third fear for their own jobs. A dearth of openings for college graduates—especially computer programmers—amplifies the dread.
The past offers some solace for the anxious. Labour markets constantly change. Today’s offices would be unrecognisable to a worker from 50 years ago. Never in modern history has technological progress hurt the overall demand for human labour. Economic historians now play down the magnitude of “Engels’ pause”, the period during the Industrial Revolution in which working-class wages grew more slowly than the wider economy.
Yet history is not always a good guide to the future, as the Industrial Revolution itself showed. The top AI models are awesome. They can tackle much more complex coding tasks than people were predicting a year ago.
The number of AI agents has exploded. Spending on AI by businesses is up dramatically. Annualised recurring revenue of Anthropic, a hot model-maker, is set to reach $50bn by the end of June. There is no evidence yet in the labour-market data of AI destroying many jobs. But given how fast it is improving, it would be rash to dismiss fears that it will. Society may be on the verge of a profound reallocation of resources, and political upheaval.
Economists’ prediction that work will stay plentiful is less reassuring than it looks, especially over a long horizon. Though the market will find uses for human labour even as models and robots become more capable, the quality of those jobs and the wages they pay are not guaranteed. Data centres will account for 8.5% of America’s peak power demand in 2027, up from 4.1% in 2025, predicts Goldman Sachs, a bank.
As AI firms bid up the price of land and energy, the dollars people earn will go less far. Eventually humans could, like horses in the age of the car, become uneconomical. Income may go mostly or entirely to owners of capital, who then go on to spend it on things that are made by AI and robots using natural resources that they monopolise.
This dystopian possibility is behind Silicon Valley’s admonitions that state intervention, and perhaps a universal basic income, will be necessary.
That remains a long way off, if it ever happens. But governments may have to act sooner, for you do not need a cataclysm to stoke popular fury. Perhaps 2m Americans lost their jobs between 1999 and 2011 owing to China’s entry into the global trading system. That is no worse than a typical month’s lay-offs in America’s churning labour market. Yet the “China shock” helped propel Donald Trump to office and led to the highest tariffs since the 1930s.
The white-collar employees threatened by AI have more political and social clout than factory workers hurt by Chinese competition. Even a small number of lay-offs could provoke a backlash against the technology; furious opposition to new data centres is a hint of what may be to come. Severe disruption to the security and status of many people could lead to widespread unrest, even revolution.
What should governments do? One set of ideas involves slowing down change. China has urged its companies to adopt AI, but not to lay off workers. Prominent economists around the world have proposed higher taxes on capital and lower ones on labour. Some campaigners want levies on data centres. Inhibiting technology is not, however, a wise path to choose. Humanity is likely to reap enormous benefits from AI: not just greater wealth, but progress fighting diseases and solving problems such as climate change and poverty. Had the Luddites stopped the automation of textile mills in early 19th-century England, the world would be far worse off today. A second category of countermeasures would be better. If employment falls, income that once went to workers is likely to show up as high profits in AI firms, chipmakers, data centres or elsewhere in the supply chain. Clever tax reforms, such as levies on corporate profits that are above a normal return on capital, on land and on natural resources, could capture these rents. The case for inheritance taxes to prevent the entrenchment of a capital-owning elite looks even stronger than before.
At the same time governments could help workers adjust. Public wage-insurance, which smooths out falls in income after job losses, can help workers find better opportunities (and so can eventually pay for itself). Denmark’s active labour-market policies, in which the state helps people find and train for new occupations, have been proved to cut spells in unemployment.
These ideas would make the economy more efficient and fairer regardless of AI. Would they satisfy voters facing disruption and uncertainty? In a populist era technocratic reforms are a hard sell. Past efforts to help workers adjust to trade liberalisation failed to stop the “China shock” backlash. In an all-AI workforce, humans will need help surviving, not adjusting.
Hence a last set of radical ideas, such as the partial nationalisation of AI firms. This week a South Korean presidential adviser floated a citizens’ “dividend” from AI businesses, sending the local stockmarket down by 5%, before backtracking. In America politicians murmur about giving citizens shares in AI companies via “Trump accounts”.
In economic terms there is little difference between a well-designed tax system and a government stake in the private sector—and countries without AI giants will have to rely on taxes rather than seizing shares in foreign companies. But America may find that some public ownership is the best way to make the social upside from the technology transparent.
Concentrations of rent must be confronted early, before the power of rentiers is too great. The jobs apocalypse is not yet here. But if governments wait for conclusive evidence before creating a safety-net, it will be too late. Better to start now. ■
Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.
AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2026
exactly...we’re told that AI is the fourth industrial revolution and that we need to ‘aggressively’ adopt it - by none other than the technocrat elites - how exactly do they know it will benefit the average person?
Tesla is gearing up in California for the manufacture of a million Optimus 3 robots that can do lots and lots of things. They have a functional brain that learns
Tesla is in the process of building untold numbers of Full Self Driving Cyber Cabs. All the cabs are connected to the AI system that learns what each is doing and that knowledge is available to all the Cyber Cabs. Tesla FSD vehicles all have the experience of 10 billion miles driven
Society is on the brink of financial failure and The Economist wants a government backed safety net.
The Economist should be screaming that society is on the brink of financial failure!
AI is limited by its ‘context window’. In other words AI can’t see the big picture. It’s very expensive increasing the size of the context window so AI does best when it’s given a task of limited scope and size. It excels in that. That’s why entry level workers are the ideal target for AI.
AI is going to fix Climate Change?
According to Climate Science, the data centers are going to accelerate Climate Change…
AI would be excellent at Fraud….
...you put in guardrails - no different than AI apps already in the enterprise, limited roles.
Besides, PEOPLE are amazing are fraud - but also have the MOTIVATION to do so. A limited AI agent, trained to do limited tasks, within a limited system...not so much.
Oh, it’s already here. It’s just not happening in great obvious swaths of layoffs.
AI is currently being used to look at existing code in major systems all over the country. It is looking for coding errors or more efficient methods for processing.
The result? 10-20% gains in efficiency and “up time”. All those little “bugs” that plague every system are getting cleaned up.
The result? Turn around times are faster. Up time is getting better. People moving stuff from one place to another are doing it more effectively. What that happens you simply don’t need as many people doing it. So job openings are not being filled. New hires are still happening, but in different fields. Companies will start seeing this on the bottom line in the next year or so.
AI is not going to be SkyNet, controlling everything. AI is going to simply make the old systems run better, faster, and longer without errors. The SkyNet stuff is still years off. We are hip deep in the later already.
I’m thinking HVAC installing tearing out new heating and cooling, roofing houses, servicing cars, hands on care in hospitals should be safe. Could AI do better than Drs and Nurses? Maybe yes.
We don’t need that problem exacerbated. I’m not sure what they mean by “accelerating” climate change unless they get more people suckered into believing in it.
down the street where I live there is a da Vinci robot that does hernia surgery
,,, on the payroll side, yeah. On the capex and ongoing licensing costs, nah.
Re: UBI; that was a very hip and pop idea in the 60s.
You’ll be both horrified and affirmed but you should read “ Riders of the Purple Wage” in Dangerous Visions or standalone print.
The US (and all) economies make short term and long term changes based a a myriad of factors.
1) Alternating presidents have totally different policies on immigration and businesses and employment of immigrants.
2) The Supreme Court just held Trucking Companies legally responsible for the character of their drivers. This will impact the many drivers who drink and/or use drugs. Trucking Companies may be looking to hire those laid off computer coders.
3) Some celebrity will come along with the next pet rock, the next timeshare and employ many for the fad.
A mix of good and bad events will happen.
I was looking for that classic but all my search showed was other stuff. I eventually decided to with C3PO.
I use it everyday...for pennies. It’s not expensive, unless you’re doing some massive workloads. People aren’t cheap, especially government employees with their benefits and pensions.
My knee replacement 2 years ago was semi robotic Mako.
and I bet it did a good job too
“If AI is threatening the jobs in the private sector, why shouldn’t it also be true in the public sector?”
This is the question almost no one is asking. Despite key differences in purpose (where a public sector ostensibly exists to protect the citizenry and secure our rights), the mechanics of government are absolutely ripe for AI and Continuous Improvement methodologies.
Imagine if renewing a driver’s license or vehicle plate were as easy as an Amazon.com order, or governments could analyze real-time data trends to reduce spend!
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