THE US Senate has recently released a report warning that artificial intelligence coupled with advanced robotics may destroy 100 million jobs over the next decade.
The report notes that this technological shift is occurring within a decades-long context where productivity and corporate profit gains have not been shared with workers leading to rising inequality.
Since the 1970s productivity has risen by over 150 per cent while corporate profits have risen by over 370 per cent. However, workers’ wages over this period have fallen by nearly $30 a week.
According to Senator Bernie Sanders, the ranking Democrat on the committee for health, economy, labour and pensions (Help), artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to destroy the working class of the US.
Sanders directed his staff to investigate how artificial intelligence automation and robotics could affect the US working class over the next decade.
Their findings provide a dark warning of the grave dangers which these new technologies pose in the hands of the multi billionaires who have a controlling influence in the Trump regime.
The report, The Big Tech Oligarchs War Against Workers, argues that the tech billionaire class in cahoots with the Trump regime are making choices that will use “artificial labour” to further enrich the super-rich oligarchy which dominates the US at the expense of the working and middle classes.
It critiques the Trump regime for “empowering AI executives to shape the future of AI,” while gutting federal labour protections for human workers.
The report notes that the tech billionaire class in the US are investing gigantic sums, amounting to hundreds of billions, into these revolutionary technologies with the objective of replacing tens of millions of human workers with a new kind of automated workforce made up of robots.
It further warns that these technologies, left in the hands of the tech billionaire class, will destroy the working class as we know it in the US.
The minority staff on the Help committee asked Chat GBT 5 to analyse the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on the US workforce over the next decade. The AI model estimated the over 100 million workers could lose their jobs in the next decade.
For example it estimated that 89 per cent per cent of workers in the fast food industry would be replaced by AI automation, 81 per cent of manual labourers, 80 per cent of white collar admin jobs, 65 per cent of teaching assistants, 47 per cent of lorry drivers and 40 per cent of nurses.
The report makes the chilling assessment: “Artificial labour could not only put millions of people out of work from their existing job. It could also replace new jobs that could have been created.
“A factory worker who loses their job cannot be told to learn to code if artificial labour also takes the coding job. At the very least, artificial labour could bring rapid and destabilising job displacement.
“Taken to its extreme, artificial labour could be used to create even more forms of artificial labour. Software engineers used to train their replacements. Now, they are creating their replacements — who in turn could create their own replacements.”
AI safety experts such as Professor Roman Yampolskiy who coined the term “AI safety” has said that artificial general intelligence, where AI systems are as capable as humans, is likely to arrive by 2027 and warns that once it does its impact on the human workforce will be devastating: “In five years, we’re looking at levels of unemployment we’ve never seen before. I’m not talking about 10 per cent, which is scary, but 99 per cent.”
Big corporations are already making mass redundancies using AI and automation.
Amazon has recently announced over 20,000 job cuts due to AI. Now it appears that the tech billionaire class see the potential for replacing their human workforce with an artificial one which never tires, does not need breaks or wages.
In the YouTube video which Sanders released about the Senate AI report he added that AI is going to eliminate millions of jobs for workers in the transport industry citing companies such as FedEx using driverless trucks for deliveries.
Meanwhile, Walmart, Ikea and Waymo are also using driverless vehicles in greater and greater numbers.
It should be added that in China AI is being widely used across its manufacturing sector with the growth of “dark factories” where there are no human workers and all of the work is done by robots and AI systems.
The tech billionaire class of the US is not coy about its plans to eliminate millions of jobs currently held by human workers. The Senate report cites an internal communication from Amazon which states: “We expect that [AGI] will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get greater efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.’’
The report goes on to note that numerous companies are planning on using AI to “stop hiring humans… AI companies acknowledge their goal is to make it easier to pay workers less.”
Meanwhile, Bill Gates of Microsoft has also warned this year: “Humans won’t be needed for most things such as manufacturing products, delivering packages, or growing food over the next decade due to AI.”
In his YouTube video on this issue Senator Sanders raises a critical question which the labour movement and socialist left must start discussing: what happens to tens of millions of workers who will lose work and how will they pay bills, pay for food etc?
The debate over the future impact of AI also has to examine other key issues. The rapid development of AGI and robotics over the next decade will probably have a dehumanising impact on all of us to varying degrees. It will redefine what it is to be human in so many ways and may fundamentally change our relationships to the means of production, to each other and call into question the very nature of what we call society.
Sanders makes the salient point: “But it’s not just economics. Work, whether being janitor or brain surgeon is an integral part of being a human being. The vast majority of people want to be productive members of society and contribute to their communities. What happens when that vital aspect of human existence is removed from our lives?”
Sanders goes on to state that the development of this revolutionary new technology should be used to serve human needs. We should not let it become a means by which the tech billionaire class become vastly more richer and powerful at the expense of wider society.
Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose work on artificial intelligence has earned earned him the title of “Godfather of AI,” has suggested in an interview with the Financial Times that the tech billionaire class see this revolutionary technology as means of getting rid of large sections of the working and middle-class labour force: “What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers. It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault. That is the capitalist system.”
The US Senate report concludes with a call to action stating that proactive policies are essential to ensure AI benefits all human workers not just the tech billionaires and corporations. It makes the critical point that the negative impact of AI is not inevitable but would be a result of political and corporate choices.
Sanders makes a call, which the labour movement should take up in this country, for a national public discussion about how to harness this revolutionary technology, which is moving at far faster pace then we can comprehend, for the benefit of humanity.
