Michiganians know the pain of job losses all too well. All you have to do is look at the city of Detroit, a once-booming city now suffering in silence because of massive economic upheaval.
Detroit was the buzzing hub for automobile manufacturing until it was hit by the frantic rise of automation leading up to the 1960s, with hundreds of thousands of autoworkers losing their jobs. Unfortunately, this trendline has continued, with GM shuttering a plant in 2019 and Stellantis laying off nearly 1,000 employees at its Warren plant recently.Artificial intelligence
(AI) and automation will accelerate this devastating trendline. We are not prepared for the rate at which jobs will be eliminated across every sector of our economy.
Recent research predicts that between 2025 and 2030, two million manufacturing workers will be displaced from their jobs due to AI automation. This could be a huge blow to Michigan’s already-declining manufacturing workforce and throw the state’s economy into chaos.
However, manufacturing workers aren’t the only ones who should be concerned about their jobs. In fact, every worker across Michigan should be concerned.
In a recent survey, 41% of employers reported they intended to lay off some of their workforce due to AI. CEOs from a variety of companies, including Ford, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase, have admitted that AI is likely to displace millions of white-collar workers. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs –– and even warned of a “white-collar bloodbath.”
Data shows AI is already displacing highly-skilled workers at an alarming rate. Recent college graduates are struggling to find entry-level work. And now, nearly three in four Americans are worried that AI will cause permanent job displacement. This isn’t a disaster scenario. This is already our reality.
As AI advances, it will bring questions to the table that our country has never had to deal with before, such as how we retrain our current workforce in the age of AI and ensure that new college graduates are not cut out of the labor force altogether. We will even have to reckon with our social safety net, with health care coverage and Social Security tied to payroll.
Luckily, Michigan’s elected officials are already on top of this issue, as demonstrated by their AI and the Workforce Plan that will invest in skill development for Michiganians and drive economic growth. However, our federal government is years behind on AI policy. Our leaders in Congress and in the Trump administration must make AI and automation a top issue before it is too late.
AI will transform our economy in ways we can’t even imagine, and we need all hands on deck from both sides of the aisle to find workable solutions to the consequences that it will bring to America’s labor force.
It is time for decision-makers to turn their talk about caring for the American worker into action and ensure our institutions will fit the new American dream: one where AI models help workers, rather than stripping them of purpose. Millions of Michiganians are depending on it.
Brendan Steinhauser is the CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about the implications of advanced artificial intelligence.