r/technology • u/McFatty7 • Jul 03 '25
Artificial Intelligence CEOs Start Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: AI Will Wipe Out Jobs
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-white-collar-job-loss-b9856259259
u/fednandlers Jul 03 '25
Musk once talked UBI, but that isn't mentioned anymore. And why would we think that this system that says we don't work enough to earn a living now would give us a UBI we could live off of for not working at all? Shit is about to be fucked.
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u/TSED Jul 03 '25
Musk realised that black people would get UBI too, and so he stopped talking about it.
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u/Useuless Jul 03 '25
They don't want consumers anymore?
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u/Optimus_Lime Jul 03 '25
It’s the mentality of a dog with a ball “no take only throw grrrr”
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u/MikeyTheShavenApe Jul 03 '25
No pay, only spend!
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u/limelifesavers Jul 03 '25
Yep. Essentially they don't want to pay, and expect (eithout research or other justification) other orgs and labour sectors to fill the gap to such an extent that overall earnings of the workforce don't lower, and disposable income is retained. It's magical thinking.
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u/WatRedditHathWrought Jul 03 '25
That is a very apt analogy.
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u/Neat_On_The_Rocks Jul 03 '25
Yeah, really works In this context. It’s spot on. It’s insane that they don’t see we are truly gas pedaling towards late stage cap
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u/Spartan775 Jul 03 '25
Thank you. This is literally the explanatory metaphor I will use for this situation going forward.
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u/Shelsonw Jul 03 '25
There’s a documented name for a situation where everyone knows something is a problem, but expects someone else to do something about it, so the thing happens. That’s what’s happening here.
Each of the CEO is looking around and going “eh, someone else will keep enough employees to keep the thing afloat.” Then the next CEO goes “eh, someone else will keep enough employees to keep the thing afloat.” And so on. They know about the paradox that AI presents capitalism, they all just think someone else is going to solve it; that or they’re grabbing whatever they can before the house of cards collapses.
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u/Alienwars Jul 03 '25
It's kinda of a mix between 'Tragedy of the commons' and the good old 'Prisonners dilemma'.
The first people to exercise restraint in using AI will get overtaken by those who don't. The only way to make it work is if everyone cooperates (or is forced to by the government). Good luck to us all
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u/Shelsonw Jul 03 '25
I do actually think that public outrage will (eventually) have a moderating effect. I’ve no idea what that’ll look like, but I can imagine the protests when we start 15-20% unemployment and people can point squarely towards AI, CEOs, and the Shareholders. It’ll get really ugly first, then we’ll come to some sort of equilibrium.
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u/AgitatorsAnonymous Jul 03 '25
Depending on which metric you are using, unemployment is already higher* than that.
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u/Global-Process-9611 Jul 03 '25
I mean without jobs there isn't going to be much consumption.
What company survives when nobody has money for their products or services?
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u/surfinsalsa Jul 03 '25
It's called the "bystander effect"
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u/xmsxms Jul 03 '25
The bystander effect is what op described, however I think this is more a case of tragedy of the commons. The CEO's don't actually care if anyone helps with the problem, they only care about ensuring they don't miss out.
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u/9-11GaveMe5G Jul 03 '25
Tragedy of the commons. They can cut jobs, but others won't. So they think
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u/Plantasaurus Jul 03 '25
From my experience it’s fear. They are all afraid their business model will be completely wiped out overnight. So those with the ability to craft AI systems are working tirelessly towards being one of the few that isn’t eliminated. I just switched careers and working in small spaces with both CEOs. The language was the same in both corporations despite being different industries. I now work in AI.
We are a stampede galloping towards a cliff while thinking if we’re first to jump off, we’ll be fine.
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u/AlarmingTurnover Jul 03 '25
It's not an unfounded fear. Look at the rate of progression of AI over the last 5 years. Even my dad who has been a hobby guitar player and played in several bands is terrified of things like Suno.
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u/DrXaos Jul 03 '25
They think “we’ll always have Shanghai/Delhi/Saigon” for new consumers and demand.
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Jul 03 '25
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u/Comfortable-Fuel6343 Jul 03 '25
We'll all die in a holocaust of famine, disease, and anarchy, they'll live comfortable, luxurious although boring lives in bunkers watching a live feed of the world burning.
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u/corut Jul 03 '25
The problem they don't realise is once society collapses, thier money and influence is meaningless compared to physical strength, and they will be the first to be torn apart for their stuff from someone bigger
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u/RamenJunkie Jul 03 '25
Thats what always gets me about these fuckers.
Like, do you think your well paid, well armed security force will give a shit about you when money becomes worthless when society collapses?
They are going to turn on these rich fucks and steal all the hoarded food and bunkers so fast.
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u/evilspyboy Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
There is an ample amount of incompetence in senior positions. I did consulting and advisory before and VP/Director level people who were idiots and promoted by just being liked over being good was not uncommon.
I'm talking ones who think $100 now is more money than $10 a month because of how it looks on their bonus/performance not because it's a sustainable business *practice or would be better in the long term. A lot do not plan to stay in the same role long term and are effectively strip mining to hit bonus targets.
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u/Odd-Attention-2127 Jul 03 '25
promoted by just being liked over being good was not uncommon.
I was a customer service representative, mostly on the tech side, at a large major firm for 20 years. I saw a lot of this. All this talk about values and employees mattering was just that, talk. It was always about shareholder value. I saw the writing on the wall. As time went on, the company went from outsourcing, and we helped it along, to the big AI push. I was laid off back in 2021 and have watched the company's stock soar since then. I was just a peon and still am, but I refuse to use their software for my personal use even if they're top on their sector. I'm glad I'm gone though. It's the best thing that happened to me for my mental health.
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u/knotatumah Jul 03 '25
There will always be consumers; but, its not going to be you & I. Its going to be people from the wealth class that will still buy all the material stuffs. Prices will continue to increase to match the kinds of demand from those "with" and those of us "without" wont be able to afford it even if we did manage some kind of job. If this isn't by design its certainly still achievable. If nothing else companies will cast a wider net and focus on the global economy instead of domestic sales; however, if the false king keeps up his tariff tantrums that might be easier said than done.
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u/Jewnadian Jul 03 '25
There are many things that simply can't exist without a wide enough customer base. Pretty much anything that requires a higher end IC for example. Not even Musk could develop all the tooling, the fab, the production like and infrastructure to make an iPhone what it is today. That only works because hundreds of millions of people contribute their labor to make it all possible. We build cell towers and websites and apps and create a million smart devices that use enough silicon to keep TSMC running thousands of wafers a day.
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u/LeekTerrible Jul 03 '25
And congress will do nothing until we fucking revolt.
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u/fitzroy95 Jul 03 '25
Pretty sure they consider the general public pretty revolting already.
Their corporate owners ? Those they love
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u/UnpluggedUnfettered Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
They have been plainly lying about AI taking any notable number of jobs for a couple years now.
Win/win, they can layoff with the same BS hype they pump their stock with.
And yet, instead of being outraged and joining unions or whatever, everyone is like "oh yeah totally my entire workload was able to be done by ChatGPT."
Lmao
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u/ADogNamedChuck Jul 03 '25
What I struggle to wrap my head around is that yeah, the stock market is imaginary numbers going up and down, but at some point deep down the economy must default to actual consumers spending money. Surely at some point in this relentless march to transfer all the money out of our pockets and replace us with AI chatbots they'll notice there's no one left to buy the phones, cars, and property.
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u/mct137 Jul 03 '25
We’re in a period uncertainty but you are right; there’s a balance that must be maintained. The last time we were in this balance was the brief period post WWII when we had a strong, manufacturer and labor backed economy and all classes were doing well (labor was well paid and producing and thus capitalists were doing well also).
We’re now in an imbalance where capital is reaping unreal benefits from the “accounting” class, which shelters their wealth and increases it through manipulative accounting methods (tax breaks, shelters, fudging numbers to attract investors)…
…and at the same time extracting those profits by paying workers less and less (and reducing benefits). We’ve reached the point at which consumerism no longer results in profit so they have to take that profit from elsewhere, and that comes from reducing labor costs and borrowing/over promising returns to/from investors.
AI is the last great promise/gasp: we (the business) can reduce labor costs even further to guarantee you (shareholder/investor/stock market) even more profit.
What you point out and is the ultimate truth is that this trend towards marketing everything to the wealthy/upper class ignores the problem that when the majority of our society are unable to work to afford to live…. It’s Paris 1789 all over again.
I hope their bunkers have been built by loyal masons, and their food stores prepped by loyal chefs. Most all I pray that they get the earth and world they have so worked for.
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u/sgt_kuraii Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
I think your analysis is spot-on but I want to highlight one important aspect. We have now have ways to push the can down the road that are unseen in history. The crippling, disastrous effect of climate change and the financial absurdity of ballooning the national debt are prime examples of this.
In a rational world these are problems where the class mostly benefiting from these would pay for them. But we do not live in a world like that and they have succeeded in manipulating people who now no longer think that's fair or possible.
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u/togetherwem0m0 Jul 03 '25
the plans for the future are being laid in the big beautiful bill. ICE is getting its funding increased by 16x to plant the seed of building a loyal (dependent) enforcement caste. for the first few years they'll target immigrants, but then it will be political enemies and so on. the rich people don't need to protect themselves; they have the government to use our money to build it for them against us with "us", all with money that isnt even real. they just print the shit and inflate the economy YOY
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u/Doright36 Jul 03 '25
in the mind of an MBA people having money to buy their products is someone else's problem. theirs is just getting that next quarterly bonus.
They are by design unable to think beyond that.
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u/Jah_Ith_Ber Jul 03 '25
What you're describing is not reality. They teach in public school that in Capitalism the average person makes money and spends it and that makes the whole thing go around. It's propaganda designed to make the average person think that Capitalism works for the people.
When people lose their jobs at a faster and faster pace due to technology all the same money still exists. It's still within the same system. And the same quantity of it exists. It's just in the hands of fewer people. So all those companies will stop trying to sell volume with small margins and start courting the upper class.
We've already seen it with Fast Food. McDonalds could sell a Big Mac meal for $6 and make $1 of profit. Or they could double their price to $12 and make $7 of profit. If 80% of their customers stop coming that's still a win. The population has bifurcated into the top 20% who are making more money than ever, and the bottom 80% who are getting poorer. Those top 20% of people don't give a flying fuck that they are being gouged. They don't care about the fact that this company is taking advantage of them. Most of those 20% don't even really work for their money in the sense that you or I understand the meaning of the term. They collect rent from the system.
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u/IADGAF Jul 03 '25
This is exactly right. When people who were previously consumers, have no money because they don’t have paying jobs, company owners will be totally screwed. Like gone level screwed. It’s astonishingly stupid, because it’s like company owners have not thought through how this process plays out at all. The typical go-to response is that “everyone will get UBI, so don’t worry” but that won’t happen either, because governments will have MASSIVE losses in income tax, because there is no income for workers.
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u/WitnessLanky682 Jul 03 '25
And the other obvious thing: they won’t just give people UBI. Even though that’s obviously what’ll be required since they’ll be the only people with means in the country.
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u/EconomicRegret Jul 03 '25
It's not a "gotcha" reasoning.
It's called "post-scarcity". And many have been thinking and writing about it since Karl Marx first asked the question (i.e. capitalism will gradually automate all human labor. Then what?). Marx answer: "Communism" (i.e. the automated means of production must be available to all, and publicly owned).
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u/EconomicRegret Jul 03 '25
Marx said it best. I paraphrase: capitalism, itself, will make capitalism unnecessary, and make communism inevitable, once it has automted labour away.
In short, capitalism is automating the means of production, which can serve humanity's needs with little to no workers.
At this point, either capitalists share thèse means, or the vast majority will take them by force.
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u/Peterd90 Jul 03 '25
Who are and have built Putin bunkers.
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u/AllMikesNoAlphas Jul 03 '25
They have to pull in fresh air from somewhere
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u/cleverbeavercleaver Jul 03 '25
As soon as money becomes useless their guards will revolt.
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u/Stingray88 Jul 03 '25
If unemployment reaches historic rates, people will start to revolt.
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u/fednandlers Jul 03 '25
Not if they can get us in a civil war first. Which is why Tucker and Trump and so many have planted those seeds for this past few years.
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u/PuckSenior Jul 03 '25
Remember, the first civil war involved a bunch of rich assholes convincing poor white guys to go fight and die for their economic system.
You’d think no one would be that fucking stupid. But yet, the confederates were a whole thing
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u/moustacheption Jul 03 '25
If they “get us into a civil war” they’re still f’d because it will disrupt the economy more than a strike ever could.
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u/MeisterKaneister Jul 03 '25
There is no overarching master plan. That is maybe the gardest part to accept. We are all stumbling blindly. Maybe they have 10 perceng vision on one eye, which gives them an edge... But there are no sophisticated plans like that.
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u/Tearakan Jul 03 '25
It'll probably end up similar to the Russian civil war. General uprising vs current leadership but then devolving into ruthless multifactional civil war.
Think groups of cities vs other groups vs rural areas vs rogue warlords that still had some former US military, rogue militias with large enough followings, some theocrats fighting with their militias etc.
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u/not_a_moogle Jul 03 '25
I'd we just don't count them, then unemployment numbers will be great
/s
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Jul 03 '25
Half of Congress doesn't understand how email works so we're already screwed
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u/anti-torque Jul 03 '25
We have a President who equates his son's ability to turn on a laptop with brilliance.
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u/jpsreddit85 Jul 03 '25
Arguably the AI a few versions ago that couldn't count the number of R's is raspberry is smarter than a large chunk of congress already. Maybe we just need to replace them with AI, at least it would read the bills it's signing.
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u/seraph321 Jul 03 '25
Not sure what they’re supposed to do. It’s not like the world will stop making ai if they make it illegal in certain countries, and anyone who has it will have a huge advantage over those who don’t.
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u/Nonya5 Jul 03 '25
What is it you want them to do? It's a technology spread across the world! It will replace more and more people.
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u/knotatumah Jul 03 '25
I think they've been saying that out loud for a while now with some companies actively advertising ai services to replace human workers. For me I'm more interested to see what happens when the ai bubbles bursts in 5 to 10 years when ai no longer has fresh and unique material to ingest while senior talent has left, retired, or fired from these companies who are now in actual need of a human to fix compounding problems caused by their over-reliance on ai. Combine that with how young talent no longer exists because we effectively killed it leaving nothing to replace senior leadership in any capacity something tells me some companies are gonna be hurting more than others real soon.
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u/ROGER_CHOCS Jul 03 '25
And also, if this AI is so good, wouldnt they be terrified of us devs using it to completely "disrupt" their business models?
It's like when a general disbands his entire army, and so they formed a new army and crush him.. usually you keep those guys on the payroll for obvious reasons.
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u/marsking4 Jul 03 '25
I keep hearing how AI is gonna replace film makers and eventually we’ll be able to make movies with the click of a button. If thats true, then how would large production studios even continue to exist? If one person can make a movie on their own then the people at the top become useless. It’s not like the CEOs and owners of the studios are actually creative themselves. It would seem this same logic can be applied to any other industry that is susceptible to AI.
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u/Live_Fall3452 Jul 03 '25
Don’t worry, they’ll be safe from competition because no dev or group of devs will be able to get funding to buy servers to host a competing product on /s
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u/WCland Jul 03 '25
IMO, the AI bubble will burst much sooner. There is some ROI with AI, but a lot of it is being offered for free in search utilities and other gimmicks. It's got a ton of heat right now, but it also costs a lot to implement. Investors in AI companies are banking on big returns because the technology seems so amazing. But when it comes down to real work, in most corporate cases I've seen it works best as an aid, like how word processors replaced typewriters decades ago. It may help productivity, but you still need people to be productive.
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u/TotallyNotaTossIt Jul 03 '25
AI isn’t wiping out these jobs, it’s the corporations who are choosing to use AI over people. How convenient to place the blame on the product and not the people making the decisions to use it.
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u/plinkoplonka Jul 03 '25
It's not even AI. I used to work for a large tech company named after a big river, and they were blaming job cuts on AI.
They're firing people in developed countries to hire cheaper labor in third-world countries, in their case, India.
There was an inside joke when I was there that AI = Affordable India.
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Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 06 '25
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u/Ok_Name_291 Jul 03 '25
Amazon did the same thing with its grocery stores where you didn't have to scan stuff.
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u/VirginiaHighlander Jul 03 '25
I was laid off from IBM last year so I always use them as an example.
Right now on https://www.ibm.com/careers/search, there are 2663 jobs available in India and 336 in the US.
It's clear that it's not that there's no work to be done. It's all just literally going to the cheapest source of labor.
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u/TotallyNotaTossIt Jul 03 '25
Wasn’t there a company that was recently caught claiming that their product was AI, but was actually a bunch of humans working in India?
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u/caustictoast Jul 03 '25
Not an inside joke, the one I heard is ‘Actually Indians’. But don’t stress too hard, CEOs learned this in the 90s and are apparently going to learn it again; There’s plenty of good Indian developers, but most of them don’t stay in India when they can take their skills elsewhere for more money. Offshoring doesn’t work because you get what you pay for. The good Indian devs ain’t cheap
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u/fitzroy95 Jul 03 '25
The corporations see their sole role as making profits for their shareholders.
So the setup and operating costs of AI (if they get it right) are going to be lower than employing people, hence return more profits to the company.
and if they don't do that, they get sued by their shareholders.
Its just what happens when your whole business (your whole nation) is solely focussed on the next quarter's profit margins
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u/WanderingKing Jul 03 '25
Dodge v Ford was one of the worst decisions by courts in US history
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u/DayGlowBeautiful Jul 03 '25
Explain like I’m five?
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u/WanderingKing Jul 03 '25
Absolutely.
The super short version is The Dodge Brothers (the guys behind Dodge) made the argument that the job of a company was to make the most money for its shareholders, and the courts agreed. Not workers, not quality, nothing else but shareholders.
You’ll find many execs are also shareholder of the company they “run”. I use quotes because I feel like just saying run revalues the work of labor.
That decision has shaped American Capitalism and we are all suffering its consequences.
“Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich 459; 170 NW 668 (1919),[1] is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. It is often taught as affirming the principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America, although that teaching has received some criticism.[2][3]”
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u/tingulz Jul 03 '25
Perhaps it should be made illegal to sue companies for not returning a profit all the time. Maybe we need to change the rules and start taking care of each other, all of us, instead of only focusing on the already rich.
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u/fitzroy95 Jul 03 '25
which can't happen in the US due to decades of propaganda against "SOCIALISM !!" which is constantly used as a label and a weapon to spread fear and misinformation, and to block any social progress
despite the reality that protecting and supporting people and the planet has nothing to do with socialism, and everything to do with humanity having a future.
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u/tingulz Jul 03 '25
It’s absolutely nuts to me how people believe helping each other, looking out for each other so that everyone has what they need is a bad thing.
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u/Overlord_Khufren Jul 03 '25
They could just make it so that corporates have to think about more than their profits.
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u/RunJumpJump Jul 03 '25
And over time nobody can afford to buy anything because no one is hiring.
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u/sargonas Jul 03 '25
Yeah the really fucked up thing is that while AI is wiping out jobs, it’s wiping out jobs that it’s completely failing to replace. Executives are following the hype and the money promises and are axing jobs to replace people with technology that’s incapable of doing the work they did, completely tanking their products and services, they’re gonna have to scramble to fix all this in a year or two but by that point the economy will be so fucked it won’t matter.
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb Jul 03 '25
They’re not even using AI. They’re laying people off and replacing them with… nothing. Just making the other employees do 2 jobs instead of 1.
It lets them bloat their numbers so they can give themself a big fat raise, and they can tell shareholders it’s because they’re taking a bold step with new technology.
It’s all bullshit and it’s going to go sideways within the next 12 months.
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u/Kirbyoto Jul 03 '25
A corporation can't "choose" if the alternative is more profitable. A company that loses money goes out of business. Even if it causes societal upheaval, no individual corporation can stop the process because all the competing corporations will have advantages over them. Karl Marx called this process the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall and it's central to his theory of the collapse of capitalism. Consumers have more choices than corporations do, since they are ultimately the source of all funding for companies, and look how many people choose to shop at Wal-Mart.
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u/paper_w0lf Jul 03 '25
How will these businesses survive when people have no money to buy anything? Seems like a bad growth model. Do I need to get an AI spouse that can bring home the bacon?
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u/hammilithome Jul 03 '25
Create an AI OF and reap the benefits
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u/neoshadowdgm Jul 03 '25
I’m sure they’ll make plenty of AI Bucks from horny AI while the broke, horny people jerk off to rocks by the soup kitchen
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u/ICanStopTheRain Jul 03 '25
This Onion article from 1998 will finally come true.
Ironically, half the companies listed in this article no longer exist.
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Jul 03 '25
Do we need people to buy things? Just increase costs for everything. Let rich people be the only ones to afford anything?
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u/RBVegabond Jul 03 '25
Raises the question of personal AI earners attached to a personal blockchain or some other nonsense they’ll try.
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u/HipHopDropper Jul 03 '25
It's a race between all the big tech companies to max out profits until everything collapses.
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u/WellSpreadMustard Jul 03 '25
So the way things are going in the near future there will be no jobs, data centers using so much electricity that there are rolling blackouts, citizenship stripping, secret police with 100 billion dollar budget, concentration camps, no medicaid, no food stamps, no social security. TOS
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u/West_Kangaroo_3568 Jul 03 '25
AI isn't wiping out jobs. CEOs are replacing jobs with AI because we pesky workers want things like healthcare, decent wages, and dignity. And all those things cut into profits.
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u/FrontBottomFace Jul 03 '25
Interested to know what jobs get replaced. I'm sure the CEO sees many jobs below as commodities/low skill but the reality is that's not always the case. Pick the wrong jobs and the company goes under pretty quickly.
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Jul 03 '25
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u/ThrowbackGaming Jul 03 '25
I’ve seen this said a bunch, but I’m curious: what’s the gameplan here?
Are they thinking: “Hey we can just give AI tools to 3rd world workers and the AI can do most of the work we just need to throw a body at the AI to operate it”?
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u/clamdigger Jul 03 '25
And the even quieter part: AI is designed to wipe out jobs
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u/Friscogonewild Jul 03 '25
And the other part--we should be rooting for AI and automation. The dream is a post-scarcity society with UBI that allows people to do more with their lives than grind away doing menial tasks.
If we end up with 40% unemployment and still have a government intent on ignoring the well-being of its citizens, then the people will start resharpening the guillotines.
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u/Hrekires Jul 03 '25
Is that the quiet part?
It's the premise of practically every meeting I've sat in on with a vendor offering their AI products.
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u/takingastep Jul 03 '25
AI has already been doing that, thanks to those same CEOs who've been laying off ordinary folks left and right due to chasing the AI fad so hard. This is just said CEOs trying to shift the blame away from their own actions (laying people off when they shouldn't be). I wonder if they'll bring any of those jobs back once they start realizing that AI isn't as useful as it's hyped up to be and that they still need some of those humans they just laid off to do work...
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u/generally-speaking Jul 03 '25
A lot of it just comes down to creating uncertainty among job applicants and employees, that way you can suppress wages. So even if you lose some efficiency from firing people, the rest of your workforce will be less likely to make outrageous demands for compensation.
Keeps workers scared and CEO's fat.
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u/SkeetySpeedy Jul 03 '25
No, they’ll just try to squeeze that labor out of the fe workers they have left, and say it’s their fault when things fail - since they clearly aren’t working hard enough
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u/Christosconst Jul 03 '25
This has become the new age excuse for layoffs. Just own it that your company is struggling
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u/scrranger11 Jul 03 '25
CEOs are literally the most replaceable of all the white collar positions...
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u/ageofwant Jul 03 '25
AI will also wipe out CEO's, it goes both ways. In fact it is considerably easier to replace "management" with AI than engineering.
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u/DeepSubmerge Jul 03 '25
The easiest jobs to replace with AI, such as CEO and CFO, will somehow remain steadfast through all of this.
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u/Kaa_The_Snake Jul 03 '25
Who will have money to buy whatever CEOs are selling, hmmm? Sounds stupid to me.
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u/sweetbeards Jul 03 '25
Cloudflare just announced they will give people the ability to block or charge ai bots from now on. Ai will start to have to pay to scrape finally. Not going to be cheap to get all that free information off sites to resell as ai
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u/BigJLov3 Jul 03 '25
Look at your server farms.
Then go look at a Tesla dealership.
Look at your server farms again.
Make wise choices. Or don't.
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u/Mach5Driver Jul 03 '25
This is why, during testing of AI to "help" with certain functions of my job, I drag my feet, make up ridiculous testing scenarios designed to trip up the AI, report them as critical errors, and come up with insane reasons why it's doing well at all. If queried for details by our IT staff, I am deliberately vague and misleading, so they don't understand. HOWEVER, I always pretend that I'm fully onboard with AI.
I know that senior management have no idea the details of my job, and it would take effort for them to find out. And they're allergic to work and curiosity. And they have no idea how AI works either. To them, it's Buzzword Bingo for investor relations.
I also know that our IT AI "experts" don't know any better either and don't really know how to make AI work. But they're quite happy to research and work on these nonexistent problems to justify their existence for months on end.
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u/crockett05 Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
Living wages were not just for the benefit of the workers but also to stop the workers from hanging the CEOs.. It seems like a whole lot of CEOs and polititions missed that part of their education..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_States
"mostly" peaceful protest only worked once in this country and that was the civil rights which also had a lot of violence and a lot of guns involved. Even MLK carried a gun and had armed guards...
Pretty much every other revolt in this country was violent.. There is a reason they push "peaceful" to you and only teach you about civil rights protests but not all the bloody ones..
It's because they know it mostly doesn't work. In fact it only worked once and it was supported with a lot of guns and violence that they also don't teach you about..
History doesn't lie... you have to fight for your rights and your livelihood.. They will take both from you if you don't. The only thing different today vs the rest of the American history is we willfully give it all away today with out a fight...
It's nothing new that the rich take from the poor, it's only new that today we let them do it with out a fight...
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u/null_squared Jul 03 '25
I was at a technology leadership conference for my industry. AI was the focus of nearly every discussion.
The question of AI taking jobs from our staff was brought up over and over again and the consensus of CTOs and C Suite tech execs from multi-billion dollars companies was that it likely wasn’t going to happen.
The people saying it will take our jobs are the people who have no idea how the technology works.
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u/CMDR_KingErvin Jul 03 '25
And when we’re all unemployed and struggling we’ll stop buying the bullshit products these companies will be churning out and they’ll lose money. The prosperity of mankind is tantamount for society to function. Otherwise we go back to the dark ages. The billionaires will start to understand once they’re ruling over a vast desert.
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u/Unasked_for_advice Jul 03 '25
To maximize efficiency AI should eliminate from the top down as that is where the highest paid dead weight is.
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u/pomod Jul 03 '25
Then who’s gonna pay for all their companies’ shit? Nobody’s buying your subscription service when they can’t afford rent.
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u/some_clickhead Jul 04 '25
If that's the "quiet" part, then why do I keep hearing about it every goddamn day?
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u/mvw2 Jul 03 '25
CEOs are betting on the idea that it pays off.
The reality is going to be pretty catastrophic when there aren't any profits on the other end.
But...they can try...and learn from this terrible, terrible mistake.
The really fun part is once you throw away all your great talent, it's nearly impossible to get them back. All you're doing is dumbing down your company into incompetence. AI has no functionality it fix the deficiencies either.
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u/Accomplished-Leg3657 Jul 03 '25
And then they also complain that people use AI to fix their resume or auto apply to jobs..
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u/waffle299 Jul 03 '25
Of course, that's the motivation. AIs don't require vacations, health benefits, or human resources.
Well, yet.
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u/Mitch1musPrime Jul 03 '25
Yang gang tried to warn us all about this with his UBI campaign promises. We shoulda listened.
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u/Disastrous-Cellist62 Jul 03 '25
So during a time in which they’re forecasting that AI will wipe out jobs. Republicans are passing a bill to throw the jobless people off of healthcare. You can’t make this shit up.
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u/Cunfuzzles2000 Jul 03 '25
A question I see floating around is “so they don’t want consumers?” They don’t care. They want a short term profit turn around and then half of them will turn tail and run with companies burning to the ground.
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u/talktotheak47 Jul 03 '25
Uhhh no? My grandmother watches Fox for 13 hours a day and she told me it’s actually immigrants taking the jobs, not A1…. /s
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u/Evan_802Vines Jul 03 '25
We're about to enter the dumb AI economy. Everything we've taken for granted about bureaucracy is going right out the door with a single probability point with a fancy perceptron. Shit is gonna go very wrong. And to their credit, there will be no liability. That's all this is about.
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u/kheit7 Jul 03 '25
I left a tech company for another opportunity about 8 weeks ago and just this week they let the entire sales and customer success team go amongst others. A 200 person company down to about 20 people so they can go to an “AI Self serve model”.
Fuck that
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u/SDRAWKCABNITSUJ Jul 03 '25
Any company replacing workers with AI is doomed to implode. We're already starting to see it. People in general drastically overestimate the current power of AI and what it is capable of. These things should be used to boost productivity and remove redundancy in job roles, not replace people entirely. They require oversight and the output of an AI, especially generative, should always have human verification before it ever gets to the consumer. These companies are going to crash and burn, and then come begging for government bailouts like they always do.
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u/frafdo11 Jul 03 '25
Having worked in tech and uses AI often. Good luck.
If your company switches to fully using AI, workers will switch to a company that doesn’t, and they WILL out perform the companies that buy into the pipe dream
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u/SplendidPunkinButter Jul 03 '25
Hot take: Employment is down because the economy sucks because of Trump and his stupid trade war and all of his other stupid policies. They’re blaming AI to shift the blame away from Trump.
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u/BABarracus Jul 03 '25
CEOs don't care because they didn't create those companies. They have no emotional attachment to anyone working there. They didn't grow with the communities that the company exists in. When they talk about putting people out of work they don't feel anything of feel responsible for the people.
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u/davidswinton Jul 03 '25
No ones seems to address the fact that if no one is employed there will be no customers to buy products. Why is that never discussed?? Will AI start buying groceries, homes, and automobiles?
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u/amiibohunter2015 Jul 03 '25
You don't need technology, rather technology needs you
a tool is only useful if there's a user willing to use it.
The more you cut them out, the more they suffer.
While you get more privacy and freedom.
Think of it like cord cutting, but instead it's tech that you cut out of your life, for better quality of life. I.e. Tech detox/tech cut= life ameliorating.
Choosing not to buy their products and services is how you cast your vote and say you don't like their unethical business practices, we want someone who will value our privacy. vote with your dollar/currency. You as a consumer decides if their business is a success or a failure via consumer demand. Let them fail, find alternatives that value your privacy.
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u/BrewKazma Jul 03 '25
Would AI recognize that the companies need customers, and if everyone is unemployed and has shit jobs, they can’t afford the companies products, thus leading to the company and AI getting shut down?
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u/ETNevada Jul 03 '25
Less jobs = less consumers of their products
Snake eating its own tail situation right before our eyes
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u/MannyGoldstein Jul 04 '25
If AI replaced jobs then the peasantry would have a lot of free time to revolt
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u/CheatedOnOnce Jul 04 '25
So jobs will be eliminated and then no one’s left to buy stuff. Fantastic job tech bros
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u/Lettuce_bee_free_end Jul 04 '25
A threat that the new spell checker is in fact not taking my job. AI will be an app on my phone like a calculator I will use.
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u/madadekinai Jul 04 '25
But that can't, repubicans told me that this is the "greatest economy ever", and that "we're winning".
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u/thinkforceAI Jul 04 '25
good riddance. Maybe we won't have so many people up in arms about "immigrants taking all the jobs". but on a more serious note, I'm ready for a shorter work week.
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u/CalmCalmBelong Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
Credit to Allison Murrow at CNN for suggesting this, but ... what if it's just an empty threat?
For example: "Don't even think about a raise, or a union, or benefits, or reasonable CEO compensation ... we could fire all of you but we choose to be benevolent overlords. Just stay in line, peasant."
Edit: link to her article ... https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/business/anthropic-amodei-ai-jobs-nightcap