The Financial Times reported this weekend that a “white-collar recession” is emerging in the United States, suggesting that a decisive shift in the structure of the US economy is now being seen.
For decades, economic insecurity was concentrated among blue-collar workers in manufacturing, logistics, and the retail sector. These were the people displaced first by offshoring, then by automation, and more recently by the gig economy and so-called platform economics.
The professional and managerial classes, by contrast, were told they were the winners of the system. They were sold the promise that digital skills, higher education, and corporate employment would insulate them from the volatility of the market. The myth was that the middle classes were immune to the challenges posed by the modern economy. That story is now unravelling.
First, the numbers tell their own story. In just the past week, Amazon, Paramount, UPS and Target have announced a combined 31,800 white-collar job cuts. Amazon alone is removing 14,000 roles, explicitly saying it must become “leaner” to capitalise on artificial intelligence. Across 2025, US companies have announced almost one million redundancies, the highest total since the pandemic, while hiring plans are at their lowest since 2009.
At the same time, GDP growth has swung wildly, from contraction in the first quarter to 3.8 per cent annualised growth in the second. Poor data and wild responses to Trump's oscillating tariff policy might have contributed to that swing, but the suggestion is also being made that the volatility reflects what many economists refuse to admit, which is that the system is not stabilising and is instead oscillating between short-term stimulus and chronic weakness.
Second, this is not a temporary correction. It is structural. AI is now being used to justify the redundancy of knowledge workers in exactly the way globalisation was once used to justify the redundancy of factory workers. Shopify's CEO has, for example, told staff they must prove why AI cannot do their work before requesting new resources. This is not innovation for the public good. It is cost-cutting dressed up as progress. When Microsoft, Intel, and BT are sacking staff while their profits rise, the logic is not technological advancement but shareholder extraction.
Third, government policy is amplifying the pain. President Trump's tariff regime and his immigration clampdown are raising costs and tightening labour supply in contradictory ways. Companies are responding by cutting white-collar staff wherever they can to offset tariff impacts. In contrast, while blue-collar recruitment in construction and manufacturing is apparently rising because low-wage migrant labour is no longer available. The result is a labour market that is neither balanced nor resilient, and one in which inflationary pressure comes not from wage demands but from supply constraints created by bad and unpredictable policy.
Fourth, the Federal Reserve's response remains entirely reactive. Jay Powell has said the Fed is watching these layoffs closely, as if they were an external event rather than the consequence of both the monetary policy it has pursued and the fiscal policy Trump is pursuing. By keeping interest rates high to suppress wage growth, as still seems to be Fed policy, it has encouraged companies to find supposed efficiencies in sacking people and automating roles. The data show the cost in terms of weakening recruitment, ever-more precarious employment, and a narrowing base of consumer demand, which only increases the economic instability in the USA.
So what does this tell us? Very obviously, the implication is that the neoliberal model of growth through corporate concentration, financial engineering, and technological displacement has reached its limits. AI is not creating new markets or opportunities for human development. It is, instead, being deployed as a weapon of labour suppression. The supposed white-collar elite is discovering what blue-collar workers learned long ago, which is that under this form of capitalism, everyone is expendable.
The apparent onset of this whole-collar recession does, however, mark something deeper than a new round of redundancies. It is also signalling the breakdown of the old social contract between business, labour and the state. The promise that education and effort would guarantee stability is collapsing, and the state, trapped as it is in its own austerity dogmas and determined decline, is not stepping in to rebuild security.
What should be done? There are a number of possibilities:
- First, the state's responsibility for delivering fuel employment should be reasserted. Governments that issue their own currencies can and should act as employers of last resort. Full employment should again be a central policy goal.
- Second, we need to redefine productivity. Investment in AI should be directed towards reducing ecological impact and improving public service delivery, rather than creating short-term corporate profit.
- Third, countries such as the USA should be taxing extraction and not work. Income and gains from wealth derived from exploitation are lowly taxed, whilst employee vulnerability is being increased, along with income precarity.
- Fourth, we need a politics of care. People must come before algorithms. The purpose of an economy is to let everyone live, work and care within the limits of the real world and not to serve the quarterly expectations of shareholders.
If even the white-collar workforce is now “holding its breath and trying not to pass out,” as one economist told the FT, then the crisis of neoliberalism is complete. What comes next must be a politics that recognises that work is not a cost to be cut, but a relationship to be sustained, and that care, not capital, is the foundation of any functioning economy.
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Although I find AI useful as a software developer I do feel it is being somewhat oversold. Of course as usual workers pay the price.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/forrester_ai_rehiring/
I read recently – a Naked Capitalism comment I think – of two large American companies who had sacked around 7,000 middle Management staff and replaced them with AI. Only to rehire them! Unfortunately/unforgivably one firm rehired on a zero hours contract.
I am almost amused.
I think this pattern will repeat in the Uk, if it hasnt already.
Panaroma has a potentially interesting episode on tomorrow that may have a slight link to this piece. We shall see.
Thank you, Edward.
It has started here.
Richard. It has come to be that the first thing I do in the morning is to look at your blog to see what you have to say. I have read this and your piece on the coming financial crash this morning, both of which are outstanding for their clarity in conveying understanding of the crisis we are in. I think many people here are beginning to fear a wave of white collar unemployment caused by the introduction of AI. I hope that when the crises do hit, as seems inevitable, that we do actually grasp the opportunity offered to build a better economy and society on the back of them, as we should have done in 2008. Instead vast sums of money have been spent trying to cling to an old system which no longer functions. It seems to me that ,AI not withstanding, there will be no actual shortage of work that needs doing. Workers in the care sector, such as old age care, hospitals, schools are underpaid and overburdened, because what they do is not sufficiently valued. There is no shortage of work, just a shortage of funding for that work. Somehow the profits from the “productivity gains” caused by AI have to be captured and channelled into work which really can be called productive- caring for other people. They can’t be allowed to just fund bigger and better mansions and yachts for CEOs. A shorter working week would also leave people freer to do more of their own caring and a shift to taxing wealth more than income has to be on the cards, if only because the more people lose their jobs the fewer people there will be earning enough to pay income tax. So you are bang on the money with your “politics of care” idea as a solution to the crisis. Hats off to you.
Thanks
Noted
What Sheila said.
Thank you
Gosh, I too am like Shelia – I wake up and first thing I do is read the bloke.
Anyway, superb post, totally accurate of what is happening.
My very big concern – with thr tech overlords share in their spoils???
I honestly believed – foolishly? That we are worked for the greater good, as a civilisation, a species to progess ourselves in health and wealth – we are part of the same thing, no?
What we have, and it must be the worst element of the human ego, is greed, pulling the ladder up – on everyone.
I dont get it. We need to be allocentric, not egocentric.
We will not survive if we do not collaborative and co-operate together.
I wake up early (5.45 today) and write the blog.
Well put
An uncomfortable reality in my view is that many white collar jobs are already what David Graeber described as “BS jobs”. Jobs that don’t make much difference if they were done or not. I’m unsure what the real impact of AI automating these jobs will be.
Last week – dinner with two very bright people in their early 30s/40s. Engineers/scientists. Their view: A.I. will destroy loads of jobs, get a craft skill (plumber/electrician/etc). Looking after people (which if you do it properly will require some level of medical skill) – ditto. The sort of investment the gov could/should make would deliver more skilled/craft jobs.
On a related note: this afternoon, I will continue work making an oak/ash/cedar chest of drawers for bed linen. I have that skill because I learnt it over 5 years @ school up to the age of 16. I’m not bragging but making an observation: education needs to cover both the development of minds (how to think) and hands (how to make). The state has an important role to play in this area – not helped by the privatisation (academies WTF?) .
I still have a coffee table I made at 14.
I worked on a model loco for several hours yesterday. Very relaxing.
There are many white-collar roles that I think we should lose involved in Private Equity, Financial Engineering, etc. These roles and the executives running these businesses (and most other commercial organisations) are simply focused on wealth extraction to benefit shareholders and themselves. They – despite all sorts of Mission, Vision and Value statements – have little or no interest in their employees. The simple approach is to add ‘sizzle to the steak’ or, more plainly, sell that somehow they have added value by cobbling together a couple of acquisitions, gained efficiencies, have created ‘quality earnings’, etc. The narratives are taken from the neoliberal playbook. The consequences are the same….greater and greater wealth extraction in the interests of the already wealthy.
My concern regarding AI is not predominantly about the white-collar job losses but rather the environmental consequences and, ultimately, social consequences. The amount of electricity required is horrendous. Couple this with the vast demand on water usage (for cooling) and we have an environmental disaster in the making. And, the industry itself doesn’t need many people so it’s not as if we are creating that many jobs…quite the opposite.
I do agree that it is time for the government to begin to realise and put workable plans in place for 100% (or close to) employment. Nonetheless, I agree with Mike Parr’s premise about learning a ‘trade’. Switzerland, Germany, etc., recognise the value of this and begin to ‘stream’ children at school towards valuable, worthwhile occupations that are not necessarily academic.
I too did woodwork, metalwork and techie-drawing in my first years at secondary. They have always proved invaluable (particularly as a uni-educated engineer). I am away to select wood / fallen trees for kuksa and spoon carving, making a natural bee-hive for next spring and to build a new table for use outdoors. We need both trades and white-collar workers. Fundamentally, we need an economic and environmental approach that values both and, more importantly, values social benefits, care, humanity, communities, wellbeing, health, education and training for all….not the few.
Much to agree with
Indeed. The education system is today lacking. And if AI is the standard to aim towards for the sit down toes and professions. Then perhaps now obsolete.
It’s little more that a poor babysitting service that requires the students to earn their keep by producing results that keep completely unrequired top heavy administrator’s in 6 figure sum salaries.
And the UK can compete on international league tables
The rise in students deregistered, now over 110k home educated, 90% of which have been forced rather than a choice. It’s historically been around 20k.
Many have send need not supported
Or the academy environment was creating the send need.
8.5k with ehcps with no suitable education.
Industry continuously states that children don’t learn the skills needed.
The government instead of responding to the crisis is bringing in law to give the state more power over all schools aged children via the children wellbeing and school bill. Part 1 deals with looked after children and highlight that the state is not a good parent. And part 2 does not require the same scrutiny over academies as it is asking in part 1 re private childrens homes.
I personally can’t vote green and the leadership do not understand the implications of the bill , and therefore the membership have been, I can only assumed, frightened by the word safeguarding. Don’t know what Henry the V11 clauses means. And have not read it.
As if they had they would see that children rights and parental rights will be watered down, the states power increases over children and by default their parents , and that the ID system comes in via this bill. Via the children.
A very great deal to agree with. Thank you.
Education is I believe still grounded in the 19th century need for workers with a particular skill set.
I agree with your comment about the importance of practical/hands-on skills as well as the more ‘academic ‘ subjects, but I also think that more emphasis should be placed on the nurturing of artistic, musical and creative education which ultimately gives much of life its joy and vitality.
I don’t doubt that the US economy is in peril… or that white collar jobs are in danger. However, given all the investment in AI by Amazon (and others) are they just “talking their book” when they announce these job cuts? 14,000 out of 350,000 is not huge and could be covered by natural churn.
Both Bismarck & Stolypin saw the political value of a growing ‘middle class’ and I will use it in its US meaning ie economically secure as a bulwark against revolution.
Stolypin wasnt supported however and ended up being assassinated by those who saw the risks to them in his policies – ie the revolutionaries and it didnt end well in Russia.
What I might wonder will be the political impact of adding a disaffected middle class to a disaffected working class with a political system that rules out change?
A disaffected middle class will definitely punch down. Fascism historically finds its roots in the middle class.
You can see the political impact already with a shift away from the mainstream parties to the Greens and Reform.
Why oh why does the western media, business elites harp on and on about how AI ( or any other innovative technology) is going to make the rich few even richer leaving the majority of western populations jobless and very much poorer.
Why is the narrative not, how do we use this technology to actually enhance and improve the lives of the majority?
MIT’s recent report on how US businesses are using AI shows very little success in implementation.
Why the sackings by the big tech companies? Purely to prop up, push up the share prices. Thereby increasing wealth or rather the illusion of wealth by using share prices as the criteria.
Expect re-hirings at much lower salaries as contractors.
What I find astonishing is the vacuity of thinking about people.
This omission is the biggest clue as to who is driving AI and always has been. It’s simple. You cut, get rid of wages, pensions, other benefits and your profits will hit nirvana levels – it will all accrue to you because algorithms and robots don’t need pensions or healthcare. Capital, corporations love this.
That is it for silicon valley. What happens to the human beings is not their concern. That’s a ‘political issue’. ‘Nothing to do with me guys! Even though I’ve been lobbying you and give you political contributions and getting you to turn a blind eye to spying on my customers’.
And what have the politicians been doing exactly? Well, they’ve not been telling us not to have kids? Too honest for them. Or not to bother spending on expensive further education for our kids. Because the jobs ain’t there.
No They have left us to market forces instead of thinking about the future. And have only ‘hinted’ that they don’t want us to produce more people by ‘nudging us’ instead using the most cruel ways possible to change our reproductive behaviour – induced poverty – the child cap on benefits, the bedroom tax, austerity, inflation – My God – even dangerously under funding maternity wards in our hospitals (the lowest of the low in my opinion).
Any sort of caring job is under-valued and taken for granted – women will know a lot about that. So I’m all for a society based on care.
David Graeber in ‘Bullshit Jobs’ detected a lot of jealousy and resentment towards jobs that were seen socially useful – I too think that that is why there is a war on caring, ‘woke’ etc., but for different reasons.
Because caring also does not work when you are trying to change society with such underhand methods as austerity/induced poverty. Better to have people at each other’s throats than caring about each other, fighting each other for less and less.
But this tactic is very dangerous. This is why fascism is growing as anger grows. The rich have seen this and is why some of them actively participate in promoting fascism. Many capricious politicians too. We are at a crucial fork in the road.
Thank you, Richard.
It’s the same in the City, Whitehall and local government.
The decimation that began mining and manufacturing in the 1980s has moved up the chain.
Might this be yet another example of the currently fashionable and powerful brand of economics, which is fundamentally parasitical?
It feeds off its host society, without concern for the sustainable welfare of that which facilitates the incomes, power and status of the promoters of yesterday’s and today’s economics/grabonomics.
Tomorrow?
I found your parasite metaphor thought provoking. I poked and prodded ChatGPT to expand it to:
In this metaphor, society and the planet together form the host — the living system that provides the resources, labour, and stability on which any economy depends. A healthy host enables steady, long-term prosperity, just as a robust organism sustains its internal ecosystem. Capitalism, however, particularly in its neoliberal form, can behave like a parasite when profit extraction outpaces renewal. When markets prioritise short-term gains over social welfare or environmental sustainability, they consume the host’s vital reserves — natural capital, social trust, and public well-being — faster than they can be replenished. Earlier forms of capitalism, though often harsh, tended to reinvest in local communities and infrastructure, keeping the host alive. But deregulated, globalised capitalism has evolved toward greater “virulence”: exploiting labour, eroding social safety nets, and degrading ecosystems, much as a pathogen overwhelms its host’s defences.
As in biology, the long-term outcome depends on adaptation. An unsustainably virulent system risks destroying the very foundations it relies upon, leading to ecological collapse or social breakdown — the death of the host. Alternatively, capitalism could mutate into a new form, or co-evolve into a more symbiotic relationship, aligning profit with planetary and social well-being. This would mean prioritising regeneration over extraction, fairness over concentration, and resilience over speed — a shift from parasitism to mutualism. Evolutionary success, in both biology and economics, ultimately depends not on consuming the host but on helping it thrive.
My Question: Can we adapt … or are we destined to kill our host?
If you involved any sort of voluntary organisation you will know how hard it is to find people with the time to support what you are doing.
Way back when computers and word processors started to appear in the workplace, I was hoping that the undoubted time that would be saved would be given back to the workers previously doing that work manually.
In shorthand, the 40 hour working week would do down to maybe 30 hours. Same pay for same work done.
I had a vision of many more hours of “leisure” for everyone, allowing, among other things, more voluntary work .
In practice, employers took that time and either reduced the number of people doing the jobs, or, in many cases, piling that work onto someone else.
How many “executives” now have much “clerical” work piled on to them? I see people struggling to get this sort of work done on top of what used to be their only job.
It will be the same with AI I suspect.
We could choose to move to many more people working 25-30 hours a week, rather than fewer doing 40-60 hours a week.
But I doubt we will.
That is how they extract ever more value from us.
Thank you, Richard.
Just to give some numbers. Last month, I spoke to a City headhunter. Last year, he averaged 150 applicants per job posted. Now, it’s 450.
Wow…
It’s an interesting, but deeply uncomfortable time to be alive. The level of systemic dysfunction in our society is now so great that some sort of seismic lurch or sharp adjustment feels inevitable, and we are perhaps already mid-lurch. The economic orthodoxy we have accepted (or suffered) over the last 50 years or so has brought us to this point, bringing politics and the whole of society along with it.
Some speak of a polycrisis, but I think I prefer ‘omnicrisis’ because it can be seen and felt everywhere. It is not only a crisis of political and economic legitimacy, it is also an ontological and epistemic crisis, and that is perhaps the most important thing. To function, all societies need some kind of shared mythology or narrative that is just about plausible to live within. Without that, you have no trust, no sense of ‘social truth’ – no society, essentially.
The key issue is that the professional classes (effectively the bourgeoisie) now see themselves peering into the hopper of the meat grinder. They were content to watch blue collar workers and their communities destroyed by this machine, while they could still maintain their belief in the mythology of perfect competition and meritocracy. Their compliance and silence was well-rewarded for a time. Now, the professional classes are fearful. The current response is one of quite vicious intra-class competition for resources and opportunities, but that can only go on for so long. History suggests that when this deal between the state and the bourgeoisie unravels, anything can happen. Does that anger turn to solidarity, or to something darker?
Your concern is wholly justified.
And your second para is especially apposite.
Hi Richard….out of interest what does an ’employer of last resort’ look like? What are the practical implications and what does the ’employer’ have people do? Are you advocating massively expanded public services/nationalised industries and hence state?
People essentially working to support society……something that I for one would condone.
An employer of last resort seeks to deliver full employment. That means that it acceots the responsibilty to create jobs when no one else will. There are almost limitless things that culd be done. What would your pick be?
Mine would be a National Care Service focussing on providing care for the elderly with proper training, salary and career progression for the workforce.
And why not?
In addition to Sheila B’s suggestion I would like to see some serious money put in to maintaining all the public spaces. All too often there will be an investment to make a beautiful and useful place to be – like Sheffield’s Peace Gardens, but then that place is not adequately maintained, it becomes shabby, so people stop taking their children because the fountain doesn’t work any more, the rivers don’t flow and the tiles have cracked, the plantings have become unbalanced as some plants out compete other (to be fair I don’t think this has happened like that in the Peace Gardens, but you get the picture). This applies to so many areas footpaths, dedicated bike lanes, pavements, hedges, signage, street corners, public art, parks of all sizes, the whole of public space needs maintaining in a way that hasn’t been possible for years. There will be sporadic bursts of capital funding, then no timely maintenance, leaving us with at best a shabby environment and at worse making that environment less accessible to say wheelchair users and at worst dangerous. But even the shabby is harmful to us and reduces community strength because we don’t want to spend time ‘out there’ so we don’t have so many of the random encounters that help to make communities.
Much to agree with.
Your post on the collapse of white-collar work made me wonder whether we might see a parallel rise in religious or spiritual vocations. In past centuries, many entered the priesthood because it offered purpose, security and intellectual life when few non-manual roles existed. As today’s professional world fragments, something similar could happen again – a search for meaning beyond the market. If so, it might even signal the start of a gentler and more peace-minded era, as people turn from competition to community and service. We can at least hope!
Now there’s an idea I had not had.
For such a shift to take root, the economy itself would need to change to value contribution and community as much as production and profit. That might mean some form of basic income or broader social support, so that people can pursue callings without fear of destitution; and a re-orientation of public policy towards local, ethical and service-based work. In that kind of economy, a rise in religious or spiritual vocations could become both viable and desirable – a quiet turning point towards a more humane, peaceful and sustainable society. Worth developing?
Let me see how the quantum series goes. It is still developing, and taking a lot of effort. But it might support this idea. The direction is surprising me.
This is already a known phenomenon – earlier waves of unemployment have led to a rise in religious vocations/application to bible colleges/seminaries. Certainly true in Baptist Union of GB. I changed direction in end of 1980’s/early 1990’s, but I was in secure employment at the time.
But now, the model of full-time stipendiary ministry is broken, churches can’t afford it, so non-stipendiaries, bivocational ministries, anything to stretch out the diminishing budget available. I was full time till the last five years of my ministry, then I went bivocational in a foodbank, although that was mostly still church money, but from richer churches than the one I was working in.
There is “people-focussed” work crying out to be done, work we can’t afford NOT to do, and government has the resources to finance it, with zero inflationary risk, massive “multiplier” benefits, and the not insignificant benefit of preventing total societal collapse and violent insurrection. But we mustn’t break Rachel’s *&#^×! Fiscal Rules!
We need someone, RobertJ, who has the breadth and depth of vision to be able to design a new economic framework to underpin it all. And I think we both know the very chap.
A question in asking, is who are the institutional shareholders?
I don’t know if this is an unreasonable assumption to make, however for any business they know they need customers. If you lay off workers to increase the profit margin. And many organisations do this. Then who will be able to purchase the products and services.
For these large orgnsations, would this not cause their share price to start to plummet if the sales start to go down.
Those that created these organisations are still within the organisation. I can understand how the daylight robbery that is Thames water has occured. The consumer is tipped off. The creditors are ripped off and the shareholders and CEO are extracting. Literally stripping the asset
But for those who built up these organisations, why would they sabotage themselves.
Does the institutional shareholder leverage more power than they should
Another thought is that if blue collar roles are rising were the cheaper migrant labour was previously utilised. Then is this not the base that Trump likes to appeal to.
I eill try to do a blog post answering this tomorrow. But it may be Tuesday given how much I have on.
I will not hold you to it. Nothing seems simple nor clear cut. is the intention to sabotage what they have spent their lives building , and for what aim. Is it to lessen the power of the institutional shareholder. To buy back their own company shares ect?. And therefore control
Having seen Blackrock attempts to sue the health insurance company , (who’s CEO met a rather untimely demise), when the company started to actually honour their obligations to customers, leading to the reduction for the institutional shareholder ( which in essence is a correction of intentional overpayments as a result of mismanagement and personal greed) ..it does being up the question, who is in charge and what is their aim
Combined with the discussions on disaster capitalists…
I will not hold you to the timeline.but thank you for your response.
Time has a different concept for us as we got caught in the cuts to services early on, under the prior government.
It seems across corporations and government and for some in the services, especially leadership , a large shift in moral and ethical compass, which appears to results in us all witnesses and experiencing,
What is the worst way a legal framework, a system ect, can be exploited, and in some scenarios seemingly corrupted.
To get to grips with the policy challenge of AI we need to appreciate how it was shaped by the context it emerged from: the era of both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who applied free-market ideology to reconstruct both the American and the United Kingdom’s economies along ‘neo-liberal’ lines; and thus move them away from the largely successful policy structures based on John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose work on macroeconomics and economic policies of governments underpinned postwar expansion with full employment and reduced inequality within the Western model of capitalism. But although business was booming, shareholder interests disliked having to share rewards and control.
In contrast, the free market construct in both America and the UK oversaw the weakening of public initiative and finance, and the loss of mutual saving and loan institutions in America and building societies in the UK. With freer movement of capital, manufacturing moved to the cheaper areas of production, towards China and Asia creating a decline in manufacturing and rust belts in America and the UK, especially in the north of England, with similar effects across Europe. The face of society then changed as the economy re-oriented to increasingly unequal consumer demand.
Artificial Intelligence emerged in this space to be adopted in the UK, America and Europe, seen as a way of replacing traditional manufacturing’s dependence on people’s experience and understanding with computer run systems throughout the economy and public life. AI systems have been designed to reduce and control work, albeit with high capital and energy costs.
We can see this now in our every day trips to the Supermarkets with the new machine based checkout tills. These avoid companies paying for staffing and social taxes like National Insurance. But this reduces employment and the tax base for our basic needs in society: medical treatments, schools, social care, unemployment compensation and other essential infrastructure.
Therefore, to open up a debate about the broad policy challenge of AI we propose social taxation on its use so companies cannot avoid its social and public policy implications. Initially, by the implementation of taxation on unstaffed Supermarket check out tills..
Therefore we call on the Labour Government to implement a national insurance charge or social tax on Supermarket tills and other technology which replaces workers and avoids paying employment related tax.
A robot tax?
I echo AWright’s concerns about the environmental impact of AI and how this squares with our need to reduce energy and water usage? It seems totally at odds with the direction we should be going and not something that will improve the quality of our lives.
It seems obvious that AI cannot replace many jobs that really matter including care work etc. and the biggest losses will initially be in finance, IT and legal type jobs that were traditionally milk round/graduate jobs. And whilst the impact could be bad these people could do other jobs.
I remain unconvinced this is a band wagon we should be bumping on, but our leader thinks otherwise.
[…] reader on this blog recently asked a question that goes to the heart of how our economy now works. It was simple: who […]
The power driving AI development in the UK is highly concentrated in a small number of enormous, highly capitalised tech corporations. They control data, infrastructure, and research agendas. There is a lack of transparency and the imbalance of power.
A Joseph Rowntree Foundation workshop earlier this year looked at the widespread social economic and political implications of this consolation of power and identified eight source of ‘countervailing powers’ that need to be strengthened to protect the health of society and hold these dominant actors accountable. AI in all its forms can supports broad social benefit but with our a rebalancing of power the UK will likely see deepening existing inequalities.
A helpful framing is offered: we must not think about AI in isolation, as a set of tools or processes, rather we should consider AI technologies as a form of social infrastructure that builds and shapes the world around us.
https://www.jrf.org.uk/ai-for-public-good/ai-and-countervailing-power-in-the-uk
I agree with that
We also need AI regulation. It’s good manual and repetitive jobs will hopefully go away however this needs to be managed and slowed otherwise we can end up with mass unemployment where the job role is tens of thousands to one due to AI replacing 95% of all jobs in a sector over 2 years. This requires regulation to make sure companies cannot simply make entire sectors disappear overnight, and we need more robust and transparent legislation over AI training data and our right to say no without services being withheld unnecessarily. That is without mentioning how the same companies building AI tend to be those operating walled garden monopolies in the data scene.
Unfortunately the tech companies fuelling this bubble are lobbying the U.S.A., UK and EU to make sure it doesn’t happen.
The 95% figure is exceptionally unlikely.