Showing posts with label displaced workers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label displaced workers. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses; The New York Times, May 5, 2026

Ben Casselman and , The New York Times; Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses

"Economists aren’t sure if or when artificial intelligence will cause widespread job losses. But they do agree on one thing: The federal safety net isn’t ready for such a shock.

The nearly century-old unemployment system, which provides out-of-work Americans with up to 26 weeks of benefits in most states, is unlikely to cover many of the workers who are most at risk of being displaced by A.I., labor experts warn.

Job-retraining programs and other forms of aid designed for an earlier era of displaced workers haven’t been updated for the current threat or, in some cases, have lapsed altogether. And Republicans in Congress last year made it more difficult for people without jobs to receive the food assistance and health care benefits that are meant to be the last line of defense for struggling families.

The bottom line: If droves of Americans are disrupted by technology and turn to the government for help, they may find the aid insufficient — or, worse yet, be ineligible to receive it."

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Rollout of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss; The Guardian, January 21, 2026

  and  , The Guardian; Rollout of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss

"Jamie Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan, has said artificial intelligence “may go too fast for society” and cause “civil unrest” unless governments and business support displaced workers.

While advances in AI will have huge benefits, from increasing productivity to curing diseases, the technology may need to be phased in to “save society”, he said...

Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the semiconductor maker Nvidia, whose chips are used to power many AI systems, argued that labour shortages rather than mass payoffs were the threat.

Playing down fears of AI-driven job losses, Huang told the meeting in Davos that “energy’s creating jobs, the chips industry is creating jobs, the infrastructure layer is creating jobs … jobs, jobs, jobs”...

Huang also argued that AI robotics was a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for Europe, as the region had an “incredibly strong” industrial manufacturing base."

Thursday, November 7, 2024

‘I’m going to sue the living pants off them’: AI’s big legal showdown – and what it means for Dr Strange’s hair; The Guardian, November 6, 2024

  , The Guardian; ‘I’m going to sue the living pants off them’: AI’s big legal showdown – and what it means for Dr Strange’s hair

"“The intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave.”

Now that wave is threatening to flood an unprepared industry, washing away jobs and certainties. How do people in the industry feel? To find out, I attended Trojan Horse Was a Unicorn (THU), a digital arts festival near Lisbon in Portugal. Now in its 10th year, THU is a place where young artists entering these industries, some 750 of them, come to meet, get inspired and learn from veterans in their fields: film-makers, animators, VFX wizards, concept artists, games designers. This year, AI is the elephant in the room. Everyone is either talking about it – or avoiding talking about it...

Andre Luis, the 43-year-old CEO and co-founder of THU, acknowledges that “the anxiety is here” at this year’s event, but rather than running away from it, he argues, artists should be embracing it. One of the problems now is that the people eagerly adopting AI are executives and managers. “They don’t understand how to use AI to accelerate creativity,” he says, “or to make things better for everyone, so it’s up to us [the artists] to teach them. You need people who actually are creative to use AI.”

Luis likens generative AI to ultra processed food: it cannot create anything new; it can only reconstitute what’s already there, turning it into an inferior product. “And a lot of companies are trying to make fast food,” he says. Many see AI as a way to churn out quick, cheap content, as opposed to higher quality fare that has been created “organically” over time, with loving human input...

The democratising potential of AI could usher in what Luis calls “a new era of indie” in films, games, TV. Just as digital technology put cameras, editing and graphics tools into the hands of many more people...

“AI is something that is here,” he tells the young creators at THU, “so you need to adapt. See the opportunities, see the problems, but understand that it can help you do things in a different way. You need to ask yourselves, ‘How can I be part of that?’"