by Paul Bass The New Haven independent
A Connecticut U.S. senator and the CEO of Walmart issued calls to action for how to protect jobs from the AI tsunami. They agreed on the coming mass loss of jobs — while focusing on different ways to help workers navigate it.
The senator, Democrat Chris Murphy, made his pitch Monday during a keynote address to a live and webcast Brookings Institution conference entitled “Beyond Productivity: The Pursuit of Purpose In The Age of AI.”
Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Kinder introduced Murphy as a leading voice “asking the big questions” about how to harness artificial intelligence’s potential “without losing our values and sense of purpose.”
Murphy proceeded to call for government not to allow “tech billionaires” “blinded by profits they will make and the Godlike power they will wield,” like Open AI”s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, to unleash new algorithms and tools that transform society without any guardrails. The government must put in those guardrails to protect mental health as well as to protect people from massive job losses, as much as 20 percent of the total workforce, Murphy argued.
He referenced a bipartisan bill he cosponsored last year to begin regulating social media companies (though it didn’t mention AI). He emphasized the need for the government to act further to limit the introduction of new tools before the emergence of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) when machines become smarter than people.
Just as the industrial revolution enabled machines to replace human physical muscle power, the AI revolution will see machines replace human brain power, with more dire consequences, Murphy warned.
“Humans really are not defined by our muscles. Plenty of species are more physically powerful than we are. We are the dominant species on the planet because of our … brain power,” he said.
“I worry that our democracy and many others could frankly collapse under the weight of both the economic and the spiritual impacts of advanced AI.” He cited one estimate that AGI would eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs alone over the next decade.
Murphy rejected an argument advanced by the move-fast-and-break-things anti-regulation forces now dominant in federal decision-making: That this moment, like the introduction of the printing press or telephone or electricity, is inevitable progress that will create plenty of new jobs during inevitable workplace changes, and will give people more leisure time. He noted that the rise of the automobile left no role for “the horse and buggy.”
Murphy did not dive into specific forms or possible regulation in his address beyond age limits on use of chatbots. He did not mention one role government can play: retraining people for new jobs. The same was true of a piece he published in June in Substack calling in general for ensuring that “citizens rather than corporate interests” manage the tech transformation.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon did mention job retraining in remarks published Monday in the Wall Street Journal from a workforce conference.
McMillon sounded the same warning Murphy did: AI will “change literally every job” and wipe out a wave of jobs across the economy. (CEOs in general have more openly acknowledged that massive jobs losses are underway.)
Walmart has tracked every job being eliminated, including by chat bots that deal with customers and suppliers and automated product delivery systems, McMillion reported. He said Walmart hired a top exec (from Instacart) to look at how to retrain workers from those jobs for the many new jobs also opening up, from building AI tools and in-store tech maintenance to dealing in person with customers and driving trucks. McMillion stated that Walmart projects that on balance its number of jobs will remain constant, not drop or increase, after the shakeout.
So the challenge is making sure humans aren’t left behind without needed training — the way many were in the wake of free trade agreements that had been struck amid promises of more such help.
The Spiritual Crisis
Murphy’s Monday appearance dealt as much with AI threats to America’s spiritual health. He cited cases in which AI bots have lured teens away from contact with other people and into sometimes suicidal isolation and depression. Adults, too, have lost their sanity surrendering their attention to chatbots designed to lock them in — including a tech worker in Old Greenwich who recently murdered his mother and killed himself as a result of bot-fueled delusions.
The senator called limiting kids’ access to deadly algorithms the low-hanging fruit of taking action. HIs bipartisan bill would limit access to many of these chatbot algorithms to people over 18, and require parental permission and age verification checks for many products.
Murphy recalled testing the bill’s ideas before an audience of Woodbridge high-schoolers. To his surprise, they didn’t object to age verification or parental consent.
“The provision that rattled them most was the prohibition on the social media algorithms to feed this addictive and personalized conduct for anyone under 18,” He said.
“These kids could not imagine a world in which that algorithmic conveyer belt did not deliver to them” suggestions for what music to listen to, which people (or non-people) to interact with, what information to obtain.
He pitched to the kids, and the Brookings audience, the virtues of human self-discovery: How as teens, his generation still found music they loved and connected with other teens. They had to work at their “discoveries” through trial and error — which, “like climbing a mountain,” made it “truly satisfying work.”