What jobs, exactly, is so-called \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d supposed to revolutionize, and for whose benefit?<\/p>\n
The answers to those rarely-asked questions have become increasingly clear in recent months, as the looming threat of AI automation appears to be taking a concrete toll on the workforce. The bombshell July jobs report<\/a> has finally confirmed what many US workers have been feeling for months: it\u2019s almost impossible to find meaningful employment anymore.<\/p>\n With just 73,000 nonfarm jobs added to the economy in July and a pitiful 33,000<\/a> over May and June, it seems the early days of the AI era aren\u2019t all they\u2019re cracked up to be \u2014 at least not for us, the worker bees keeping the whole hive from coming apart at the seams. As Time Magazine\u2018s Philip Elliott recently wrote<\/a>, workers in the richest country on the planet are now in uncharted waters.<\/p>\n Since 2005, service workers have made up the bulk of the US labor force, contributing 80 percent<\/a> of the nation\u2019s GDP. Though the service industry has historically struggled to find workers \u2014 thanks in large part to low wages at corporate chains \u2014 that trend is now beginning to reverse, with recent college graduates<\/a> struggling to find work at places like Starbucks and Costco. That\u2019s a stark benchmark, with especially grim implications for the over 45 million US citizens<\/a> who never had the privilege of attending college.<\/p>\n Joining them in the blender are entry-level white collar workers, graduate students and specialized tech workers such as coders and analysts. According to the Financial Times<\/a>, massive firms like Microsoft \u2014 once a dependable landing pad for STEM workers<\/a> \u2014 are seeing quarterly profits skyrocket by as much as 25 percent, even as it\u00a0cuts jobs<\/a> by the thousands.<\/p>\n That particular trend in STEM hiring has been months \u2014 if not years \u2014 in the making. In May, a software engineer with 20 years of experience made headlines<\/a> after tech industry layoffs had relegated him to flipping junk on eBay to afford the trailer he was now living out of.<\/p>\n But to answer the question of why \u2014 and for whose benefit \u2014 workers are struggling, we need to look beyond the tech industry hype<\/a> into the moves made by those calling the shots.<\/p>\n One major factor at play is the executive angst over AI returns. Over the last few years, AI adoption has become a major conversation<\/a> in boardrooms across the country. But so far, AI has been a wildly unprofitable money pit<\/a>, as buggy rollouts and large language model (LLM) hallucinations catch major corporations off guard<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet at the end of the day, the number has to go up \u2014 such is life under capitalism. This led to some chaotic scenes earlier in the year, with some firms begging their staff to return<\/a>, and others either contracting temporary \u201cAI fixers<\/a>,\u201d or just doubling down<\/a>.<\/p>\n As\u00a0the FT\u00a0flagged, corporate executives are finally getting their act together and converging on a single narrative: \u201crevenue per employee<\/a>\u201d must go up.<\/p>\n In a bygone era, \u201clayoff\u201d could be considered a dirty word. Now in 2025, kicking employees to the curb is viewed as a sign of technological progress<\/a> \u2014 lower payroll means more cash to burn on AI, not to mention higher profits per share, resulting in higher stock valuations. It\u2019s a win-win for Wall Street and the c-suite; they\u2019re the engineers of our economy, after all.<\/p>\n But that system is exactly why layoffs pose an existential threat to ordinary people. If erstwhile workers could count on social services like universal healthcare, subsidized groceries, guaranteed housing, and universal basic income \u2014 all programs pushed by FDR<\/a>, by the way \u2014 layoffs wouldn\u2019t be the stability-threatening problem they are now.<\/p>\n Instead, thanks to decades of rapacious corporate greed<\/a>, those crucial services have been gutted, vetoed, and privatized.<\/p>\n As it stands today, a person\u2019s wellbeing in the US overwhelmingly depends on their ability to find employment<\/a>, and as economic inequality rockets into the heavens,\u00a0even that isn\u2019t a guarantee<\/a>.<\/p>\n So as billionaire executives cut thousands of workers off from the only lifeline available in the name of AI, it bears asking: is this the world we want?<\/p>\n