Does anyone else worry about AI job losses and government inaction?

[MariaMagdalenaa]

Just what my title says really.
I work in an industry where tens of thousands of people already have lost their jobs or are at risk/ constant threat of jobs being lost to AI. Yes I know there will be new jobs created too, but what will happen with our society and economy when people are losing their jobs. I especially worry about the young generation. I always feel as if the UK government is very passive. They passively looked on at all the offshoring taking place for decades too.

I can’t believe that having written this post, I let AI correct my title 🤪

Nobody? Little bump to
my post.

Yes. Totally. I cannot understand the end game. Other than billions in the pockets of the already rich tech giants, I can't see who benefits.
No point making stuff and providing services more cheaply if no one has any money.
I cannot understand how it will work long term.
And also the damage to the planet is huge.
And yes goverments are passive. Capitalism is driving the development totally unchecked.
Terrifying.

Thank you for this reply. I feel as if I am the only terrified one. And yes no one really speaks about the environmental damage from AI. I feel like we need to speak about this more.

Totally..every time we use it it wrecks the planet a but more.....

I have a wider concern that government fails to recognise this as one of many changes to the workplace, and that we have a digital not analogue world.

Consumer protection is one area as an example.

It has always been the same as technology improves, all those typists and switchboard operatives, all those shop staff, manual factory workers, farm workers, right back to the Luddites breaking looms and those have pretty much all gone as well. Everything changes you move with it or live in the past.

I guess I work in the same industry, well over a hundred thousand high profile layoffs this year so far, continuing the last couple of weeks. I was laid off in April from a role where increased AI usage is massively on the agenda.

But... something has to change right? It's just a question of when we get to the tipping point. Twenty years ago I worked for a mobile phone company and there were conversations then about the hot topic at the time, off-shoring and outsourcing, and comments were made along the lines of "there need to be enough people left in the UK earning enough to actually afford expensive phone contracts, or what's the point?"

So on current trajectory, it's easy to see how there won't be a shortage (relatively) of people who could afford a hundred or a thousand Teslas; but how many will be able to afford just one? Replace Tesla with anything else suitable at any income level. Global economies cannot function in their current way by only supplying yachts and jets to billionaires. For a start, who would build the yachts and planes, if there were no functioning economic system?

Yes it’s another thing driving the wealth gap - which is getting ever bigger.

Governments never think long term that’s why they aren’t paying attention, they are only interested in the length of that parliament and their own popularity.

For me its not about not embracing change, but more that yet again there appear to be few checks and balance
When Trump fell out with the US Defences's AI provider because the coy wouldnt take take the 'guard rails' off their package Trump just went to a coy with fewer scruples.
The UK govt has no joined up thinking. They are set to approve huge new data centres in the southeast that have massive water requirements. There is no system in this country for grey water usage. And no requirement in planning for these schemes to declare water requirements or set up their own grey water systems. So they will be cooled by drinking water. Yet they will be built in the very part of the country that has the least water, and where the most house building is going on.
There are so many facets to AI other than economic.