AI-driven job displacement reflects extractive automation: Altman’s techno-utopianism obscures corporate labor extraction and precarity
Original framing: “OpenAI's Altman says AI unlikely to lead to 'jobs apocalypse'” — The Hindu
Historical patterns show that automation has repeatedly been used to suppress wages and dismantle labor power, from the Luddites’ resistance to textile machinery to the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs in the late 20th century. Each wave of automation was accompanied by claims of 'progress,' yet the net result was often increased inequality and precarity for workers. The current AI wave follows this script, with corporations leveraging technology to erode bargaining power and externalize costs.
Altman’s claim that AI is 'unlikely to lead to a jobs apocalypse' is a classic example of techno-utopian gaslighting, obscuring how automation is a deliberate strategy to extract surplus value from labor while concentrating power in the hands of a few.
Historically, automation has been a tool of labor suppression, from the Luddites to the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, and the current AI wave follows this pattern, with corporations like Amazon and HSBC using AI to displace workers and erode bargaining power. Marginalized communities—women, racial minorities, and informal laborers—are disproportionately affected, yet their voices are excluded from the narrative, reinforcing colonial patterns of extraction. Indigenous and Global South models, which treat labor as a communal and sacred responsibility, offer alternative frameworks that challenge Silicon Valley’s extractive logic. The solution lies not in accepting 'inevitable' displacement but in democratizing ownership, redistributing labor, and embedding technology in public interest—pathways already demonstrated by cooperatives, UBI pilots, and publicly owned AI in places like Mondragon, Finland, and Barcelona.