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.

Genuine question, what do you expect government to do?

For instance if they banned data farms the likes of MS etc would locate them in Europe (as they already do).

There are apparently small cheap electric cars coming along so no need to buy a Tesla. If AI makes companies more efficient and reduces costs, prices should fall and theoretically at least people will be released from boring repetitive jobs to do more interesting things.

What industry is it that is losing 10s of thousands of jobs?

South Korea, at least, appears to be trying to address some of the potential issues. I'm not aware of any proposals or even any concerns coming from our government about the possible impacts of AI generated fake news and images:

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260517/korean-bill-seeks-strict-watermark-mandate-on-ai-generated-content

Can’t say I’m remotely worried, no.

And I’m using AI constantly at work. It’s been life changing.

They already are, but the majority are from China. At a fraction of the cost.

So when our European allies (Germany) lose all of their factories due to being undercut by China, they will have us over a barrel when the only option is to buy their cars. Because we certainly aren’t making many here.

Being dependent on China when they have a complete monopoly in any industry is not somewhere I want to be.

I can only assume, when people say AI will do everything, they aren’t using copilot. I am regularly frustrated with copilot as it behaves like an unreliable employee. Sometimes it does something remarkably well and other times it’s shockingly bad. I’m public sector and we’re told to embrace AI (but only the free versions that are allowed). So at the moment it’s like suggesting your weakest employee will take over the world and that’s hard to believe.

Email significantly shifted jobs and the print industry looks totally different to 20 years ago. Change is inevitable.

Email significantly shifted jobs and the print industry looks totally different to 20 years ago. Change is inevitable.

Email and online publishing are simply different vehicles to convey original human ideas and thoughts, though.

What AI is doing is completely different. It's scraping all the original words and images people have uploaded on the internet and repackaging them as content owned by a big tech company, free for now but eventually presumably for big bucks. Essentially it's looting the Internet, taking things people posted on the WWW for free and selling it back to people for corporate owned profit.

The potential costs are things like people losing control of all the content they put on the Internet, even if it's copyrighted/posted behind a paywall. Also the quality of what AI scrapes and regurgitates will probably become increasingly meaningless as more and more of the content scraped is already AI generated. And that's before you get to the fact that the jobs it's replacing are the jobs people most enjoy and need to earn a living and it's not like it's going to be doing these jobs for 'free' as it will be competing with real people for finite resources like power and water.

Some kind of discussions at government level about what AI really is, who owns it, who is likely to profit/benefit from it, what the costs are and who is going to fund those costs (infrastructure, water resources etc) and how do we pull the plug at any point if we want to, would be greatly appreciated, as it this point it feels like we're just sleepwalking into a whole revolution that no one really asked for and few people really want.

There is a long way between banning data centres and allowing them to be buit in an area of water shortage!

The beginning of end stage capitalism.

I think the point is a lot of people are left behind as they cannot move with AI. AI is moving on without people and especially the young.

I want AI to take my job already. I need a kick up the backside to do something more meaningful with my life.