Seems to me this is begging the question. Like, you are asking for speculative fiction so there are no wrong answers. But here you go:
First, society would stagnate because all intellectual work will be done by LLMs which only know how to do things the way we always have. So progress comes to a halt. Profits inevitably stop rising as 30% of humanity no longer consumes whatever it is people working are making.
Those 30% will have to just create their own society. Maybe it looks like Mad Max with the outsiders raiding cities for food and supplies, or maybe they take over a bunch of arable land and just live.
More and more people are pushed outside of the city-states of the rich until it’s just them hooked up to VR goggles and nutrition IVs and jerking off into virtual swimming pools of gold at a virtual Epstein island, living their dream, unaware that they are irrelevant and unmissed.
Everyone else carries on without them, and any time someone gets too rich or powerful they are promoted/exiled to go live in the gilded prison of the rich.
Indeed, no one knows the future. It’s still necessary to question.
For nvidias stock price maybe, but youre time is better spend looking for faries and elves tbh
Our tech bros are hoping for some form of apocalypse that reduces the world population by 80%. Hence their rush towards accelerating climate collapse, pushing the world towards nuclear war and encouraging the development of AI and novel diseases. When they emerge from their underground sanctuaries or remote tropical islands, they will be in a position to rule over the remnants of humanity. The serfs will have no choice but to serve their new overlords by eking out a living serving their needs
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This is the actual answer, depopulation.
The vast majority of people working in silicon valley aren’t clued in to this and many would change what they do if they did realize the goal. This doesn’t happen because the system trains us to think in terms of short-term challenges and consequences.
IIRC during the great depression the unemployment rate was around 25%. So, if nothing changes 30% unemployment would be really really bad.
So currently in the US, job growth numbers have been in sharp decline for the last 5 years with negative growth some months of 2025 and 2026. If AI replaces 30% of the workforce those displaced workers won’t have other jobs to transition into, so they would likely become long term unemployed. It would vary drastically state by state, but it’s reasonable to assume bluer states would pursue legislative goals like extending unemployment benefits for worker displaced by AI or universal basic incomes, redder states likely wouldn’t and instead off taxpayer funded incentives for more AI job destruction.
AI replacing jobs would actually create a minimal amount of new long term jobs to service the AI and the hardware it runs, but that would generously be maybe 10% of total jobs lost.
History shows us that in times where people in their 20’s and sometimes 30’s are our of work and desperate, civil unrest ensues. The redder states that opted not to extend unemployment or implement UBI would see the brunt of it. Naturally they would increase funding for law enforcement, pass new regressive laws around protesting and civil unrest, and try to increase funding and numbers for the national guard.
As desperation grew many would migrate from red states to blue ones creating an influx of new residents the existing systems might not be able to support. It’s likely you’d find more permanent or semi-permanent homeless encampments and/or vehicle dweller gatherings.
A massive cut to jobs would look a lot like the great depression with increased interstate migration and large numbers of desperate, unemployed, and homeless people looking for security. In the 1930’s we created a massive public works program to end the great depression, with today’s politics though, we probably won’t be able to pull something like that off again.
Best case scenario: Wall-E
Worst case scenario: Mad Max / Elysium
First of all, why 30%? We all know that in time 100% can be automated. Anyway, I see two posibillities:
1 Kings: AI’s endgame in the west is realtime monitoring of it’s citizens/potential protesters. They will not tolerate discord, anything threatening money or power will be found and ended. We will have a few “kings”, and they will rule over us with the illusion of “democracy”. Every so often we will vote for a puppet, but the kings will remain immortal and untouchable. Everyone will recieve a fixed ammount from these kings, but if you are not loyal, they will cut you off.
2 Communism/Socialism: We can already see “back factories” in China, meaning they are fully autonomous, materials in one end, product out the other. So they have already been trying to compensate workers who lost their job. My hope that provinces with high automation, robots/ai will provide universal basic income. Besfore you criticize China for being totalitarian please read some recent articles about things they built/opened, huge waterway-channel, two larges water-powerplants, thorium nuclear reactor, broke limit on new tokamak.
That’s the way I see it at least… Have a good day to you all. Try to stay positive.
China takes the excess money and invests it in business. It gives fuck all to displaced workers and people in need. Go look at the Chinese social safety net its abysmal
china is not doing what you are thinking. they certain have alot of joblessness right now, for new graduates and they are frustrated so much that because of the col they arnt willing to have kids, the 1-child policy dint help, just matters worst. Plus they got flack for even suggesting that US-scientist fleeing the US come work for them. the govt is definitely freaking out right now over thier population crisis right now, like other declining birth countries, they arnt doing much to remedy that.
yes they maybe moving towards green energy, better AI, or whatever. but thier citizens are not happy right now.
What recent article did you read to comr to this conclusion? I will read it.
no longer have to work, or 30% joblessness?
no longer have to work
No.
no longer having work
Joblessness. The question being that given so many educated people watching their job being done by AI, not able to compete to earn money, not enough essential jobs for them to fill.
Wide spread poverty
30% jobless, not even unemployed would cause mass unrest, and or protest at the least. thats why govts love to fudge the numbers on thier countries jobless statistics to avoid an uprising. unless it happens slowly, nobody notices until its too late. i wouldnt be surprised if the us joblessness is actually higher than what is being reported(yes we know they love to report on which population is jobless).
I wonder how long that typically lasts amongst educated people before they decide to make changes?
Tldr: educated people, scientists want change, economists clearly speak out, with evidence ranging from Math, over models, to irl examples form history and present, FOR a much heavier taxation of wealth, more social programs, workers rights and market regulations. It is just that this gets shut up, people get too easily manipulated and people who want to bring change sabotaged by those who have power, money, influence.
Long version:
I don’t remember where i have this following statement from:
To see unfairness, having the willingness to bring change and then see it threw, you need to be selfless, charismatic, (politicly) connected, determined and smart.
The once calling for change, the scientists, are smart, determined and often selfless but rarely charismatic and politicly connected.
The average politicians are charismatic, connected and sometimes determined and smart. But not selfless and their intelligence is in tricking people and not self reflection and long sight.
A vast majority of humans are reactionary, impatient and driven by egoism or atleast not selfless enought that they’d give up something small that others have it better. All problems we are facing all over the world can be boiled down to one stem cause: greed. That caused all these ripple effects. But when true peoples servants (or those that want to be it) try to fight the root, the once benefiting from the system as it is right now, try with all power to undermine and sabotage these efforts. Unrooting the tangled web of problems, one thred at a time, takes a lot of time and effort, because it is harder to untangle a gordian knot than to create one. But many humans, because of their impatience and selfcenteredness, want easy and quick solutions, that dont change the way they life. This ofc is not possible to be given so, the once promising this, will win every time. But those types of people speak nothing but shallow words.
The solution to this character problem would be education. Lots of it. This would break the cycle, however this goes against the interests of the once controlling and benefiting from the cycle.
It is not that there is no drive for change. No call. Look at history. Climat change has been an issue for over 60 years. Even in 1853 the first prediction was made that “so much [polution], on such a scale can not be good for the world” talking about the smog from all the factories of the industrial revolution. So many generations! So much time! Has anything been done despite all being aware this can cause extingtion? Nope!! In fact Shell HIDE SCIENCE EVIDENCE OF CAR EMISSIONS CAUSING HEALTH PROBLEMS AND CLIMAT CHANGE! The warning was in the 2000s “if we breach 2°C global warming there will be no way back.” Right now, we are at 2.6°C. And instead of doubling down, after having a devistating flood every year in central europe, europes forrests burning, hail and drought levels that destroyed entire harvests on mass in europe, EU is thinking about getting rid of their ban of fossile fuel car sale and production that - if it were up to science - should have already gotten in effect in 2020, got then pushed to 2030, then to 2035, - germany is putting a cap on Renewable energie from wind turbines, after in 2018 having put on a cap on solar energie due to AND I QUOTE “The sun will not always shine, it will die out one day and so why should we invest in a technologie that soon wont be useable anymore”
Greed and money is what forces science to shut up.
Sorry for that much text
I think we can already see what happens when jobs get scarce and salaries don’t keep up with prices, because it has already been happening almost everywhere. Not because of AI, yet, but if AI accelerates it, you can sort of see where things are trending.
People can’t afford even basic needs like housing and consume less. Even businesses like McDonald’s, that usually do well when people are low on money, are starting to feel the pinch.
Economic troubles tend to become social unrest. Mass protests recently erupted in Spain over housing prices for instance.
Social unrest and economic uncertainty breed political instability and tribal thinking (we have to protect our homes, our country first) which result in violent power takeovers or democratic approval shifting to political parties that can most effectively “speak” to our fears and self-preservation instincts.
If AI really kills 30% of the jobs while, at the same time, driving energy prices up, it’s exponentially more of what we’re already seeing.
I dont think 30% of people will be without work. But in the future if thats the case I think we’ll see a reduction of work hours from 40 to 30. A reduction in quality of life, less pay more money taken up by the essentials, government increasing taxes and using that to create work via infrastructure projects and expansion of bureaucracy.
Maybe an increase in local markets, selling services and fresh goods.
Maybe an increase in war as the contention for resources becomes to great.
Pretty bleak stuff.
it is severe enough to cause unrest though, if even 10-20% becoming unable to find jobs anywhere.
Unemployment would never get to 30% without either generous UBI, or societal unrest.
Or perhaps an especially militarised police and surveillance state to keep the trashing contained
Like now, but worse and with a lot of people caring a lot more about economics to survive. I also expect that the gig economy is going to affect those numbers as more people hop into those services as a way to survive.
Wrote this question on wrong post. Tired today…
What conclusion? Also no article, that’s why I’m asking the question. I’m interested in a what a society like this would potentially look like. Answers from an increase social safety net like UBI, to Mad Max style apocalypse have been fascinating.
