Robert Bruno is a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the director of the Project for Middle Class Renewal, a research-based initiative tasked with investigating labor policies in today’s economy. Bruno, the author of the book “What Work Is”, spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora about artificial intelligence’s impact on workers.
AI-driven job displacement and public concern
How should we start thinking about workers whose professions may be displaced, disrupted or altogether eliminated because of artificial intelligence?
If you listen to the CEOs of these big tech firms, they would have you believe that the flesh-and-blood worker is all but obsolete. Then again, these are the same CEOs who are enjoying great success in driving up their stock values or are busy hyping up their companies in anticipation of initial public offerings. But that may be more bluster than forecast — a good way to attract other wealthy people to invest in your company. The scarier thought is that investors are attracted to firms that promise to increase stockholder wealth by firing workers.
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My guess is that there will inevitably be sizeable displacement of workers because of AI, but perhaps not to the extent that some AI proponents are predicting or desiring. A lot of white-collar workers and knowledge workers could be automated, but for now, plumbers, electricians and nurses, for example, are not going anywhere. AI may alter certain task elements of their jobs, but it cannot repair or install a toilet or change a patient’s bandaging in a hospital.
Yet, millions of workers could face technological unemployment and not doing anything to help them just surrenders the health and welfare of our society to a handful of the wealthiest people on the planet. Those same ultra-wealthy seem committed to raising obscene amounts of capital primarily by convincing investors that they can minimize or eliminate human labor — and they may be right.
Public sentiment also matters a lot in this discourse. The general public is far more suspicious and uncertain about whether AI is going to be a good thing in their lives and in their workplace than the AI evangelists. I do not see how you can live in a democracy and just unilaterally submit to this technology’s impact on our lives and livelihoods without some sort of healthy debate about it, especially because it is going to create winners and losers, which will inevitably worsen income and wealth inequality.
Policies to protect workers in an AI economy
What policy steps can we take to cushion the blow for workers hurt by AI’s arrival?
What we need is a worker-focused strategy. We should be talking about how AI will be deployed in the workplace and how it will fundamentally change the very concept of work. How will it influence the control the workers have over their work? How will it redefine craftsmanship? How do we ensure that workers benefit from the potential increase in productivity and wealth creation? And should not workers own a piece of the brave new world?
We should be anticipating what it will do to job redundancy. If it will inevitably lead to job loss more easily in some areas than others, then how do you protect those workers and their earnings? How should we respond to their lack of income?
Should we be looking at an AI dividend that is modeled on the Alaskan approach to oil wealth? Perhaps, but then how do we make sure that workers have health care, especially if health care continues to be tied to employment? I suggest we should be thinking about things like universal basic income, employee ownership and a stronger social safety net.
State governments routinely give out millions of dollars’ worth of tax credits, the state of Illinois included, to start new businesses or to attract new businesses such as data centers. In addition to addressing environmental- and energy-related concerns, maybe we should condition new data centers and AI workplace deployment on the employers doing certain things such as creating — not discharging — a certain number of high-quality jobs that provide full benefits.
I think workers ought to have a voice in how technology gets deployed in the workplace, which means we need to embrace the role that labor unions play in negotiating the terms and conditions of work. And by the way, this is not a new concept.
Manufacturing unions and workers in transportation and shipping on the East and West Coast docks have language written into their collective bargaining agreements about the deployment of technology in their professions. Hollywood actors and writers waged a strike over this same issue a few years ago.
So we need to have a discussion about strengthening unions’ ability to negotiate tech adoption for broader classes of workers, like teachers, nurses and retail workers. And that is only going to happen if unions have enough strength, size and scale to make it happen.
Like the introduction of past technologies, perhaps the direst predictions simply do not come true. The closest analog is the productivity and employment growth during the mid-1990s from the previous decade’s commercialization of the internet and the spread of computerization. Of course, while worker productivity soared, worker median wages only crept upward. But even the best-case scenario for integrating AI leaves many workers behind. A possible better future of work is not an argument for failing today to plan to help workers.
Augmented intelligence, exploitation and democracy
AI advocates have said that we should not think of AI as “artificial intelligence,” but as “augmented intelligence,” enabling workers to do more with less. Should workers embrace that concept?
If the technology is about squeezing more surplus value out of fewer workers, then it is not “augmented intelligence,” it is just exploitation, which should be disqualifying under the principles of fairness and justice, especially if it is worsening inequality.
It is part of the evolution of America’s unique version of capitalism, which is different than other versions in Canada and Europe. We need to seriously think about the consequences of this technology. Is it all about just further extracting value out of workers and generating increased profits? Or does AI technology genuinely advance human capacity?
If it is just another tool for exploitation, that does not bode well, historically speaking. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that this is happening within a certain political and economic climate. And last I looked, America is still a democracy and workers should have a say in how tomorrow unfolds.
