HUMAN WORKERS ARE AN “ENDANGERED SPECIES”
David Barnhizer
Given the educational, demographic, economic and political challenges we are facing, how do we prepare our students for a tomorrow in which the conditions are in such a drastic flux? We can’t “freeze” that future in place or make it go away. As Malcolm X explains, we must provide our learners and institutions with the skills of clear thought, reliable information, and the ability to understand what is going on and adapt ourselves, our collective systems and our institutions to what is occurring. Indoctrination, political propaganda, and sloganeering prevent this from occurring.
Just how serious are the challenges posed for us by “tomorrow” is shown by the rapid transformation of jobs and the workplace in ways that almost certainly mean there will be a drastic decline in human employment and opportunity. One study, Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace concludes: “The next 15 years will see a revolution in how we work, and a corresponding revolution will necessarily take place on how we plan and think about workplaces.” Fast Forward adds:
“Artificial intelligence will transform businesses and the work that people do. Process work, customer work and vast swathes of middle management will simply disappear. [One key conclusion of the Report is that] Nearly 50 percent of occupations today will no longer exist in 2025. New jobs will require creative intelligence, social and emotional intelligence and ability to leverage artificial intelligence.”
In a study of the massive impacts of computerization on human jobs, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?, Oxford University economists Carl Frey and Michael Osborne indicated that the AI/robotics shift is not like others we have experienced. The “bottom line” is simple. It is that if we do not get a handle on the processes of change and make strong, fast and accurate decisions that at least slow down and shape the transformation, Western society as we know it is going to collapse.
As indicated, the study by Frey and Osborne put probable US job loss by 2030 at 47 percent. No society is equipped to deal with such an economic and political nightmare. This is particularly the case for extraordinarily complex systems such as in the US. America already has expensive subsidy and safety net promises and obligations that cannot be met if predictions of job loss are anywhere close to being correct. Frey and Osborne indicate, as do others, that unlike other transformations of our economic system, there won’t be a significant employment recovery on the other side of the downturn. They highlight this fact by observing:
“This raises questions about: (a) the ability of human labour to win the race against technology by means of education; and (b) the potential extent of technological unemployment, as an increasing pace of technological progress will cause higher job turnover, resulting in a higher natural rate of unemployment.”
Another analysis concludes that what is occurring with AI/robotics is different from past economic revolutions. In that regard, Howard Schneider asks: “has the nation's ability to generate well-paying jobs in manufacturing and other sectors been fundamentally scarred by changes in the global economy that may predate the 2008-2009 economic crisis but were more starkly revealed in its aftermath?” The unfortunate answer is Yes!
Schneider then goes on to indicate that, as observed by an Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President, we are facing something outside human experience. The result could be “a workforce based on large numbers of lower paid workers, with a few highly paid managers, professional and technology workers, and a permanent hollowing out of the middle class.”
Brian Hopkins of the market research company Forrester continues the litany of job destruction, warning: “Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service and consumer services.” The Forrester analysis adds: “These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. … For now, they are quite simple, but over the next five years they will become much better at making decisions on our behalf in more complex scenarios.”
We have already seen a shift away from agriculture and manufacturing jobs previously filled by human workers. As more jobs become automated, many repetitive and low-skilled jobs will vanish, or shrink into specialized niches with limited work opportunities. We have agricultural tractor systems, grape pickers, a totally robotized Nissan production plant, “fast food cooks”, servers, bar tenders, health care providers, hotel staff, CPA’s, teachers, and far more that replace human workers, or dramatically reduce the need for human workers.
See, for example, Kurt Knutsson’s report on a humanoid-scale robotic system. https://www.foxnews.com/tech/humanoid-robot-gets-work-bmw-assembly-plant. “Humanoid robot gets to work in BMW assembly plant: Figure's AI-powered machine takes on manufacturing tasks, signaling new era in automotive production”, Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report Fox News, 7/29/24. Then add to this part of the job loss equation a new development in solar panel installation. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/climate/solar-panels-robots-maximo-construction.html. “Robots Are Coming, and They’re on a Mission: Install Solar Panels: Energy companies say a labor shortage is one big obstacle to installing more solar power. They’re turning to machines to speed things up”, 7/30/24.
If the above developments do not provide some insight into our situation think about the impact already being experienced with Generative Artificial Intelligence systems, ChatGPT, and what Sam Altman has just described. See, https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/openai-says-its-new-model-can-reason-think-much-like-person. “OpenAI says its new models can reason and think ‘much like a person’: Microsoft-backed OpenAI adds new o1 and o1-mini models to ChatGPT”, Breck Dumas, 9/13/24. OpenAI describes its breakthrough AI technology as follows.
"We trained these models to spend more time thinking through problems before they respond, much like a person would," the company said in a blog post. "Through training, they learn to refine their thinking process, try different strategies, and recognize their mistakes.” OpenAI said the models are capable of reasoning through complex tasks and can solve more challenging problems than previous models in science, coding and math.
The expanding development of robotic farming systems has particular implications for US immigration policy. What is to be done with the millions of migrants who enter the nation to work in agricultural employment as the immense agri-business conglomerates increasingly adopt automated systems? The implications of robotized agricultural systems may be even worse for developing nations’ economies that are heavily dependent on agriculture for their own economic development.
Given that we are in a society where many people are mainly or solely qualified to work in repetitive, low-skilled jobs, and are unlikely to suddenly develop the ability to do higher end innovative, technical, scientific and conceptual work, the inevitability of massive job loss on the basic levels of work poses an extreme challenge. What do we do with millions of people who have lost the opportunity to engage in the only types of work for which they are qualified or capable?
AI/Robotics Is Overwhelming Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Nation
AI/Robotics is “quietly” overwhelming the fundamental institutions of Western society and we are unprepared for the social impact of the vast changes soon to be upon us. McKinsey Global Institute and Oxford University researchers have predicted massive job loss will occur with 47% to 50% of US jobs eliminated or significantly affected by 2030 and up to 800 million more jobs destroyed worldwide. Nor will the AI/robotics transformation produce large numbers of replacement jobs. The AI/robotics systems are already being designed to do those and the AI and robotics technologies are achieving incredible advances in their capabilities at an accelerating pace with breakthroughs announced in what seems almost monthly.
No area of work is sacrosanct. Work opportunities are being eliminated from the most "intellectual" activities down to the basic areas of services and labor, including a range of professional occupations heretofore thought of as distinctly human. These include cuts in middle management, finance, banking, insurance, medicine, high-tech, transportation, law, and even the arts.
Worse, it is playing out in the context of a set of critical issues. Birth rates are plummeting below replacement levels in economically developed nations. People are living to ages well beyond historical averages. At least fifty percent of Americans have little or nothing saved for retirement. Poor and uneducated migrants are flooding into Western nations at a time when the agricultural, construction and home care jobs many migrants have traditionally filled in the first years of their arrival are being replaced by robotic workers.
An already bankrupt US government is projected to experience annual deficits above $1 trillion for at least the next ten years. The US national debt is officially admitted to be $35 trillion, but is actually far higher according to a 2015 warning by former US Comptroller-General David Walker who testified that the $18.5 Trillion debt at that point was closer to $65 Trillion when all the promised but unfunded legal commitments to be paid out in future decades are taken into account. Boston University Economist Laurence Kotlikoff testified to Congress about what he described as the “infinite-horizon fiscal gap” in challenging the Congressional Budget Office’s far lower estimate. In 2013 Kotlikoff stated he projected that “gap” to be $210 Trillion. The “gap” is due, as the Brookings Institute states, to the CBO’s failure to take into account the full range of financial obligations to which the federal government is legally committed. Even this catastrophic situation is not the complete story because of the unfunded obligations of state, local, and corporate actors.
As AI/robotics eliminates jobs across the spectrum, governmental revenues will plummet while the debt dramatically increases. This represents a crisis of limited and declining resources on all levels—including underfunded or non-existent pensions as federal, state and local pension plans fall far short of expectations, and corporate plans fail due to inadequate revenues, health problems and medical costs explode, people’s limited savings are used up in only a few years, and job destruction continues at a calamitous pace. As we are already experiencing, this will drive many millions into homelessness and produce a dramatic rise in violence.
All this will take place in an environment of increased AI-facilitated surveillance by governments, aggressive militarization using AI systems and autonomous weapons, and the degradation of of the world’s economic and political order. The final five chapters of the book The Artificial Intelligence Contagion: Can Democracy Withstand the Imminent Transformation of Work, Wealth and the Social Order? (Clarity 2019), co-authored with my son Daniel, offers some potential solutions.
Job cuts in last half of 2023 and first half of 2024
It is too easy and even comforting to ignore what is taking place. One problem in trying to think through all the job loss prescriptions is that the predictions and projections are so broadly formulated that we lose in the “human”. For that reason, I am including below a one-year snapshot, still incomplete but informative regarding undeniable trends about what is taking place in the job market. They represent only some of the companies and industries that are eliminating employees and functions.
Layoffs in the tech sector have occurred at a high rate in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Data from Layoffs.fyi suggests that over 155,000 tech industry workers at more than 500 companies lost their jobs in 2023 and the elimination of jobs has not slowed in 2024. It is not only the job loss in terms of how data are reported with too often a political spin that serves the interests of those in power. There has been a dramatic reduction in full-time employment and a corresponding increase in part time jobs with many people taking on multiple jobs to make ends meet.
The abilities of robotic workers are improving rapidly to the point that human workers are being replaced or undermined as robotic systems assume their work in whole or part. For the US system some of the jobs data is being skewed in terms of what is happening in the lives of American citizens because a substantial number of work opportunities are being filled by recent illegal migrants. On one level this “feels” OK but as the lives and earning capacity of legal residents are being worsened rapidly there is significant damage to long-time residents on whom the health of the economy and culture was grounded.
A continuing thread in ongoing AI research and development activity is that job displacement is no longer limited to “blue collar” or manual work. Finance and brokerage systems have begun to provide investors with AI/robotic financial advisers. Banks are slashing clerical and mid-range staff by the tens of thousands. In the process, human financial advisors are being terminated in significant numbers. Banks are also in the early stages of closing many of their branches that had grown to a total of 90,000 less than a decade ago but are now being under-utilized because a large number of people have shifted to online access and ATMs. This process will accelerate due to the cost savings it creates, with the result that tens of thousands of jobs will be lost.
The chief information officer for the Bank of New York Mellon states: “[B]ots armed with AI and the ability to understand and respond in natural language can be used to answer clients’ queries and eventually execute transactions.” …. “You start with something simple, maybe just offering information, then you start doing transactions.”
The “peak human” orientation is explained in the context of continuing bank job cuts: “Even if revenues recover because of higher interest rates, improving economies, and a rebound in debt trading, new platforms will simply scale up to the higher volumes without needing many more flesh-and-blood operators. Wall Street has reached peak human.”
In any event, as you look at the following data on job cuts, as set out with the reduction on the left hand of the page, think about the fact that, if cutting edge industries are slashing work opportunities simultaneously, where do the newly eliminated workers with specific types of skills go to find new work when their base industry is flooded with massive job cuts. This does not even take into account the fact that an estimated 7,000,000 young American males have dropped out of the workforce and are reportedly not looking for work.
MOTOR VEHICLES, TRANSPORT & SUPPLIES
1600 Stellantis.
2500 Stellantis (Italy, adapting to clean energy)
6400 Stellantis (reducing jobs and costs)
900 Guangzhou (Honda)
7150 Continental AG (Germany, Auto, 1750 R&D and 380 software development)
2900 Ford (2023-2024 10 months)
2700 Ford (German switch to Spain)
1300 Hino Motors (Toyota subsidiary)
500 OLA Electric (Auto parts & streaming)
550 Motional (Auto technology, Sr. managers included, and “restructuring”)
6020 Tesla (sales division)
14000 Tesla (10% of global workforce)
1150 Valeo (auto, France, hybrid & EV)
1200 Bosch (auto supplies, reduce software)
1200 General Motors (two Michigan plants, delays in EV)
936 General Motors (closing Innovation Center)
2000 VW Group (restructuring)
2500 Rolls-Royce (removing duplication and creating cost efficiencies)
30,000 Yellow Corp. (trucking gone out of business)
AIR TRANSPORT
3000 Alitalia
2000 Southwest Air
656 American Airlines
1000 Northrup-Grumman (aerospace and defense)
FINANCE & BANKING
500 Yes Bank (restructuring, reducing branches)
1600 Natwest (financial services (Poland)
4500 Citi Group (worldwide cost reduction)
20,000 Citi Group (Simplify operations, 2 year plan)
250 TSB Banking Group (cutting Fraud division, operations and branches)
2000 Vodafone Germany (financial services)
1200 Vodafone (Spain)
1000 Metro Bank (cutting its seven day open branch model)
366 PWC Australia (Banking, cuts include 37 partners)
1600 LLoyd’s Banking Group
1000 Metro Bank
3500 Deutsche Bank (office jobs)
1000 Paytm (Financial services)
1500 State Street Corp. (Financial, streamlining)
1000 Block (tech and financial services)
900 Slalom Consulting (financial)
2400 Farmer’s Inc. (Insurance, restructuring, efficiency and profit)
1800 Royal Bank of Canada
Credit Suisse (closing 80% of the Bank’s Hong Kong section)
1200 Deloitte
COMPUTER, AI, INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION
1500 Microsoft (mission engineers & operators)
1900 Microsoft (gaming unit) employees
1000 Microsoft (Seattle sales and customer service)
600 Apple (ending some technical projects)
6000 Dell Technologies (cutting 5% of workforce)
2800 Telstra (reduce overhead of business operations)
750 Lumentum (telecom, optical)
12,000 Intel
900 Sony
4000 Cisco Systems
4800 Bell Media
1000 Google (core engineering and hardware divisions)
1800 Unity Software (gaming technology)
1200 OpenText Corp. (technology and software development)
3421 Telefonica (Spain)
3000 Xerox (“Re-invention strategy)
42000 Google (Strategy to integrate AI into its business practices)
2000 Pico Interactive (virtual reality and interactive)
2000 Charles Schwab (financial services, reduce costs)
14000 Nokia (Finland, weaker economic environment)
830 Epic Games (gaming tech, financial stability)
5000 T-Mobile (Telecom)
6000 Telus (Telecom)
1300 BCE (telecom)
1000 AT & T
TECHNOLOGY, TRANSPORT
10,000 Maersk (Shipping & ports)
1200 Goodyear
12000 UPS
2000 Fed Ex (consolidating)
5000 CVS (reduce costs)
1000 eBay (retail)
1500 Expedia