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\n Illustration: Brandon Celi\n <\/p>\n
The tech companies have ideas. In early April, OpenAI \u2014 whose most cheery prediction says 18 percent of jobs will soon be automated \u2014 rolled out a plan for a \u201cNew Deal\u201d for workers: a 32-hour workweek, a public wealth fund, a tax on capital gains. On the moderate end, Anthropic\u2019s Dario Amodei admitted that AI job disruption was \u201ca macroeconomic problem [so] large\u201d it may require a whole new tax code \u2014 with a duty levied \u201cagainst AI companies in particular.\u201d But while the country\u2019s two leading AI companies talk about a dramatically different landscape for the American worker, Congress has been largely silent.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was holding off for hard data. Until recently, the stories of vast displacement by AI were mostly anecdotal and met with skepticism. When Amodei told Axios last year that AI could \u201cwipe out nearly half of all entry-level white-collar jobs,\u201d one couldn\u2019t help noticing the statement helped his company\u2019s valuation. And when former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey laid off more than 4,000 staff at his new firm, Block, citing AI, critics were quick to point out artificial intelligence was just as likely a convenient excuse to fire people without having to fess up to bad hiring or poor profits.<\/p>\n
The mood, however, is starting to shift. In March, Goldman Sachs issued a report that about 7 percent of workers will be displaced by AI. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that 2025 ended with the highest unemployment rate for recent college grads in years. Yes, another recent report challenged the \u201cAI-job-apocalypse narrative\u201d \u2014 but this one from MIT did so mainly on speed: \u201c2027 is too aggressive an estimate for AI to broadly eclipse the performance of human workers,\u201d a statement on the data said. \u201cAI will achieve 80 percent success rates on most tasks by 2029.\u201d (So much better.)<\/p>\n
Even if a politician doubts we are headed to AI hell, one would think self-survival would push forward some bold proposals. Seventy-one percent of workers in one recent poll say they are afraid of job displacement from this technology. Pro-AI PACs like Leading the Future are already dumping millions into the midterm elections. Clearly, the companies are worried something could be done by those in government. (It\u2019s doubtful the millions are actually being used to push OpenAI\u2019s \u201cNew Deal.\u201d)<\/p>\n
We asked five members of the political class who have been vocal regarding AI about their colleagues\u2019 relative silence. What are politicians saying behind closed doors? And why isn\u2019t there a big plan to deal with AI from D.C.? \u2014 Jacob Rosenberg<\/p>\n
I thought that policymakers at all levels, especially the federal level, would be eager to jump in on this issue because it\u2019s likely to be the defining one of the next decade. This is not personal computing; it\u2019s not like electricity. The entire purpose of this technology is to replace human intelligence and human labor.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve made the analogy to the \u201cChina shock,\u201d which totally changed manufacturing in the United States. The China shock led to significant job losses and political realignment. But the potential job losses from AI are five times that and therefore have the potential to be even more transformative to our politics. The 2028 election is likely to center on the impact of AI on the country \u2014 and two competing visions for how to deal with it \u2014 in the way that COVID really shaped the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
Part of my obsession after spending three years in the Biden administration is that you can\u2019t just look at a chart of the economy and say, \u201cWell, real inflation-adjusted median household income has improved, which means that people\u2019s lives are getting better and they\u2019re happy.\u201d The economy is much more complicated than that, and there are these feelings about uncertainty, autonomy, fairness: \u201cWhy is it that this is being taken away from me and I see a bunch of other people around me who are seemingly at random getting really rich, but I can\u2019t get ahead?\u201d<\/p>\n
When you talk to Democrats, a lot of the unspoken response is \u201cWell, the other guys are in charge for the next three years, and if I propose some kind of sweeping expansion of the social safety net and worker empowerment and expanding unionization, it\u2019s going to go nowhere.\u201d Of course, nobody\u2019s going to come out and say, \u201cThe reason I\u2019m not talking about this very much is that I don\u2019t want $10 million dumped on my head in my election\u201d \u2014 but I do think that that\u2019s in the back of people\u2019s minds, too.<\/p>\n
I also think that there\u2019s a legitimate tension here, which is \u2014 look, other countries are moving forward with this technology, whether we do so or not. China\u2019s not going to stop, and some of these folks in the Middle East are not going to stop, and countries in Europe are not going to stop. And so isn\u2019t it better for the U.S. to lead that race and to be able to set the standards globally rather than China?<\/p>\n
What I would say to them is unless you convince people that the adoption of this technology is going to somehow make their life better, then there\u2019s going to be a political groundswell to stop it.\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 As told to Jacob Rosenberg<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not yet in the school that says, \u201cYep, 40 percent of people are going to lose their jobs.\u201d We don\u2019t know. It\u2019s going to work in odd ways. But what we do know is that it\u2019s unlike how shipping jobs overseas and the shift in trade policy wiped out manufacturing. That was confined, it was geographically largely confined, and it was industry confined because the central insight was people will build things in Asia so much cheaper than they will build them here in the U.S. that we can afford to have our work done in Asia and still pay the transportation cost to bring it all the way across the ocean and make a bigger profit than making it here at home. I\u2019ve just described the whole multitrillion-dollar effort that destroyed much of middle-class America and unions and the American Dream. But it was comprehensible. This one will hit in all kinds of places that are hard to predict. So I actually talk with some of the big thinkers on this, and I say, \u201cWhat does that mean for the worker?\u201d And they say things to me like, \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely crucial that a worker be flexible and resilient.\u201d Those are the words you hear over and over and over.<\/p>\n
So what does it take to be flexible and resilient if your job may disappear in the blink of an eye? If you were to have the magic wand and could say, \u201cAI is coming, this disruption is coming,\u201d what would you do? Wouldn\u2019t you say, \u201cYou know what? We better unhook health care from jobs and make sure that everybody in the country has health care\u201d? In other words, one way you\u2019re resilient is, oh, I don\u2019t know, you might call it Medicare for All, universal health care. You would not leave health care tied to jobs.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the next thing you do? You would change our unemployment insurance. You\u2019d beef it up; you\u2019d take it out of its 1935 mind-set. All the things that we found were broken during COVID that we didn\u2019t fix, you\u2019d come back and you\u2019d fix that. What\u2019s the third thing you\u2019d do? You\u2019d make post-high-school education free or nearly free. So every therapist who gets knocked out of a job has an opportunity to retrain in something else \u2014 to learn a new skill without having to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt. You\u2019d have universal child care. So if Mama or Daddy can get a job, they can get right back into the job market. If they don\u2019t have a job, they can still keep their child-care spot so they can have the care they need to get an education if they have to go back to school. So part of my point is we in Congress should be thinking about the regulation of AI, but we should also be thinking about the resilience of working-class America. How do you strengthen the safety net for all our people?<\/p>\n
So why doesn\u2019t leadership of either party seize on this? And the answer is because billionaires don\u2019t want to pay their fair share. Why do we not have universal child care? Because it costs money and Jeff Bezos would have to pay more in taxes. Why do we not have health care that works for more Americans? Because it was more important to the Republicans to do a $2 trillion tax break for the ultrawealthy and corporations. They literally used cutting people off their health care to pay in part for their huge tax cuts that go to the top. We\u2019re watching people, millions of them, colliding with the powerful who don\u2019t want to hear this.\u00a0\u2014 As told to Rebecca Traister<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to give you two statements that are both true: There will be many jobs created by AI that we cannot possibly predict; millions of people are going to lose their jobs to AI. The proportion is going to be way, way off. I can say very, very confidently it\u2019s going to eliminate millions of call-center jobs and retail jobs, coding jobs, and eventually driving jobs. I\u2019m sure that it will create thousands of new jobs that don\u2019t presently exist. It\u2019s just the ratio is going to be ten to one.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say I\u2019m sitting with an average tech CEO \u2014 non-billionaire variety. He would say, \u201cHey, this is real. I\u2019m going to fire 50 percent of my workers over the next five years. I don\u2019t know what my kids are going to do for college. And that\u2019s my life.\u201d That tech CEO is not going to somehow start going on the news advocating for an AI tax or universal basic income or anything like that. But they see it all happening. They feel bad for some of the workers they\u2019re going to fire, but there\u2019s not really a room where people come together and say, \u201cOkay, guys, we\u2019re going to all come together and do this or that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I would put this AI job apocalypse \u2014 or what I\u2019ve christened \u201cthe fuckening\u201d \u2014 in a category of a number of problems. It\u2019s a proud American tradition. It would be a bigger surprise if people got together in a room and came out and said, \u201cHey, here\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do at the end of the day.\u201d Because the American system doesn\u2019t actually lead to that happening.<\/p>\n
So there will be a whole parade of 2028 candidates saying, \u201cI\u2019m deeply concerned about the effects of AI, and we should examine the impacts and take it very seriously.\u201d What does that mean in terms of actual legislation or policy? Unclear. Several politicians have reached out to me. This is actually the way they frame the question, which is funny: \u201cShort of UBI, what do we do?\u201d \u2014 As told to Jacob Rosenberg<\/p>\n
The potential domino effect is this incredible stratification of our society where you have a massive unemployment rate for everybody who doesn\u2019t touch this technology. I just think that that is not how you sustain a democracy. It\u2019s not a recipe for social stability. It is a recipe for disaster. And we\u2019ve got to make sure that does not happen.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think people really yet appreciate the significance of the potential threat here. And that\u2019s one of the reasons that Senator Mark Warner and I have introduced legislation that would require the government to collect information on AI job impact. I say this to everybody who tells me, \u201cOh, Josh, you\u2019re an alarmist.\u201d Well, fine, let\u2019s get the data. Then let\u2019s require the government to report regularly, multiple times a year, about the number of jobs created and the number of jobs lost due to AI. If we can\u2019t agree on that, I don\u2019t know what we can agree on.<\/p>\n
I will tell you that I hate the universal-basic-income idea. I hate it because it takes away the independence and dignity of work. People want to work.<\/p>\n
And if people are going to get laid off because of AI, I don\u2019t know how they\u2019re gonna pay their health-care bills. I think we should say, \u201cNo taxes on health care for all Americans.\u201d Whatever you\u2019re paying on your premium ought to be tax free; whatever you\u2019re paying on your prescription drugs ought to be tax free. Go down the list. We ought to cap the price of prescription drugs \u2014 we shouldn\u2019t allow these drug companies to charge us 300 percent more for the same drug as they\u2019re charging somebody in France.\u00a0\u2014 As told to Simon van Zuylen-Wood<\/p>\n
I think it was ten years ago when I went up to the microphone at the Democratic retreat. You know, when we go off in a hotel somewhere to sort of stare at our navels and decide what the future of the party is? So I went up to the microphone and said, \u201cAI is coming at us, and we\u2019re not ready for it. And the biggest effect is it\u2019s going to drive the market value of human labor toward zero.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was really Google \u2014 you know its \u201cTransformer\u201d paper? It was after that that I started getting communications from some of my friends in comp-sci that said, \u201cYou would not believe what Google has come up with, these large language models.\u201d And then ChatGPT commercializes them fast and without many controls, frankly.<\/p>\n
Anyone who spends a big part of their day staring at a screen has their job at risk. AI can sit there and watch what you\u2019ve done for a while and then step in and make a pretty good imitation. Ten years ago, people were worried about self-driving trucks taking\u2019 jobs, stuff like that. I\u2019ve been a little surprised at how long that\u2019s taken \u2014 although it looks like it\u2019s finally happening too.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re going to have to fundamentally rethink the value proposition for being a human being in the world. The value of a human has to be something different from the market value of their labor.<\/p>\n
Historically, I have not supported single-payer health care, all right, and I\u2019m going to switch my position in support of that on the basis of AI.<\/p>\n
And if you want money to move in the economy, there is no logical alternative to reaching deep into Elon\u2019s pocket, redistributing the money at the base of the pyramid. Well, you can do a better job of public infrastructure. That is another way you can redistribute a lot of wealth. If everyone has really nice walking trails and parks right outside where they live, that is a source of great personal enjoyment \u2014 and even though you don\u2019t have much of a job, or the job is no longer what defines your life, you\u2019ve got a beautiful nature preserve. It\u2019s \u2014 you know, it\u2019s a future that you can imagine for your grandchildren without feeling depressed.<\/p>\n
The challenge will be to figure out how to subsidize human interaction. I think maybe one way to reward organizations and people who do something positive for human interaction is that they should all get subsidized some number of pennies per minute when one human is looking into another human\u2019s eyes. So if you set up an archery club where you all go out drinking afterward and laughing and looking into each other\u2019s eyes, that should be your economic reward.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if you remember the first time you ever looked into a potential girlfriend\u2019s eyes and you sort of felt your heart flutter. A very large fraction of our brains is dedicated to recognizing the faces and analyzing the emotions of our tribe members. So I think that if you want to figure out how to make humans happy, look at the tribal societies we evolved in and try to reproduce that in a way that doesn\u2019t involve having raids on your nearby tribes. \u2014 As told to Simon van Zuylen-Wood<\/p>\n
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\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the April 20, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n