A welder in Detroit (James L. Amos/Corbis via Getty Images)
Amid all the hysteria, technological wreckage and gallons of spilt ink, artificial intelligence’s most potent legacy is yet to be discerned. As we enter the fourth industrial revolution, everyone from the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab to 61% of Americans believe that AI poses a serious threat to humanity’s future. Such charged rhetoric, however, masks a more serious shift: the way in which it will accelerate the feudalisation of the West, concentrating power in the few large firms that seem destined to dominate the field.
AI’s problems start at the top. Unlike the internet, which spawned a number of independent companies (including Google and Microsoft), AI seems to be controlled by existing tech giants, which are investing heavily in these new firms. ARM, for instance, the British-based chip designer whose IPO last week set Wall Street aflutter, is garnering huge investments from other Big Tech firms, including Nvidia, Intel, AMD and Apple. Elsewhere, Open AI’s largest investor is Microsoft, while DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014.
This pattern of collaboration between giants and upstarts suggests that the next tech revolution seems poised to empower the existing hierarchy. It also threatens the prospects of the classes below. Big Tech and venture capital executives such as Reid Hoffman promise that AI will serve the cause of “elevating humanity”, despite potentially wiping out hundreds of millions of jobs worldwide. Indeed, according to McKinsey, at least 12 million Americans will be forced to find new work by 2030. In other words, AI looks destined to warp our class structure in a similar way to feudalism, turning what has been a collection of Roman citizens into serfs.
But is this the entire story? Historically, humans have performed analytical tasks manually. They may have created tools, such as spreadsheets and surveys, to help them. But the tasks of optimising businesses have largely lain in the hands of human analysts who spend their days collecting data on the performance of businesses and markets. In the last phase of technological development, jobs for these “symbolic analysts” exploded: in the US, the number of workers in occupations requiring average to above-average education, training and experience increased from 49 million in 1980 to 83 million in 2015. Yet these tasks are now running into a buzzsaw with AI, whose underlying premise is that machines can learn to detect patterns and changes better than human beings.
In his bestselling book AI Superpowers, Kai Fu Lee, a former Google and Microsoft boss who now runs one of the world’s most prolific AI venture funds, proposed a two-dimensional view of the future of work. His key thesis: that the social nature of a job and the discretionary nature of a job will be the key factors underlying AI’s impact. If, for instance, a job is highly formulaic and has few discretionary decisions, and people perform their tasks with little social interaction, AI is likely to displace it. So, while the CEO of an insurance company might be safe from being displaced by AI, one of his analysts is not.
And this is where the nuance is often lost. According to the US Labor Department, AI and automation could impact as many as many as 90 million American workers, with warehouse workers among the most prominent losers. What will really alter class relations, however, is the impact on more professional jobs. They have been the ascendent class for the last two generations, growing at an average annual rate of 2.2% since 2001 — well above the 0.4% annual rise for total employment. But whereas the computer revolution was a boon to those working as programmers and market researchers, AI does the job for them, often with more speed and accuracy. As Rony Abovitz, one of the pioneers of virtual reality and AI, has observed: “It’s the end of the white-collar knowledge work.”
In such a world, it is not hard to envisage a new kind of class conflict that extends beyond the traditional Marxist conflict between low-wage workers and better-educated owners. More than 82% of millennials fear AI will reduce their pay, and they are right to be worried. “We may be at the peak of the need for knowledge workers,” Atif Rafiq, a former chief digital officer at McDonald’s and Volvo, recently warned. “We just need fewer people to do the same thing.” As if to illustrate his point, tech firms such as Meta and Lyft have already announced major cutbacks in their white-collar workforce, while IBM has paused hiring to assess how many mid-level jobs can be replaced by AI.
What this means more broadly isn’t tricky to discern: a once-rising class that often embraced the oligarchy’s ideas now faces the same kind of marginalisation experienced by less-educated workers for generations. And it is not unreasonable to conclude this could eventually divide the current political alliance between progressively minded professionals and the AI-enhanced elite. Perhaps the most visible example of this is the writers and actors strike — drawn from a class traditionally aligned with the oligarchs — currently underway in America, where AI threatens to make the manufacturing of entertainment largely redundant.
Indeed, tech executives are already planning for the emergence of a vast, unproductive class made largely redundant by AI and robotics. After interviewing 147 digital company founders, the technology journalist Gregory Ferenstein has concluded that an “increasingly greater share of economic wealth will be generated by a smaller slice of very talented or original people”, while everyone else comes to rely on gig work and government aid. This is reflected in support for universal basic income by a number of leading tech oligarchs — Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick (former head of Uber), and AI guru Sam Altman (CEO of Open AI).
Of course, many might wonder what is wrong with this. Already, roughly half of all Americans support the idea of a guaranteed basic income of about $2,000 a month if robots put them out of work. UBI enjoys even stronger support in most European countries, particularly among younger people. Further east, the popular Japanese Marxist philosopher Kohei Sato sees re-distribution as a way to as achieve the green goals of “degrowth” and “net zero” without devastating the masses.
Yet if history is our guide, such intellectual circles are surely plagued by a certain naiveté. In every stage of capitalism, the ruling class has offered promises of welfare and support. And in every stage of capitalism, they have only done so with the intention of strengthening their own position.
What is different this time, though, is that there is one class of worker who remains capable of opposing this neo-feudal structure: those with hands-on yet skilled jobs, such as the engineers refusing to work at Intel’s new semiconductor facility in Ohio. After all, even the infrastructure for AI requires tactile skills, and, as a result, technically capable blue-collar workers still have leverage and can shut down the whole infrastructure. This same class of skilled artisans were at the vanguard of the rise of democratic capitalism. Two centuries later, they may be our best hope for resisting a very different revolution.
Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.
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SubscribeDo you see any hope? Reform is the last throw of the dice, but I don’t see any miracles happening. Britain decided to throw open the doors to the Third World for reasons I don’t understand and the final act is inevitable.
What is emerging unnoticed (in particular by those that do not wish to notice )
There is now a whole generation of young voters who are part of the “multicultural experiment” from school age and beyond .
They no longer pay attention to the slogans but rely upon their own experiences.
As an American, I just don’t understand how this slow kiss of death was given to such a once great country like the UK. What is it about the native collective psyche that allowed this to happen, to keep electing feckless fools when it’s been clear for years, even from our shores, that your country is not, nor could or should be, a melting pot for the world’s ethnicities? Is there not a sizable enough demographic to just absolutely not play ball? Can England not get angry?
The UK’s fate is sad beyond words, and confounding. Not that we don’t have our own absurdities in the USA. But at least there’s a strong vein of ‘screw it, not taking this ** anymore’ and then doing something about it.
When all parties in the Uniparty and their cheer leaders throughout the media continually ram home the elite message that unlimited immigration is a good thing it is easier to see why any other political view is hard to get across. Any criticism of the elite view has been denigrated for decades especially the state sponsored BBC which dominates broadcast media here.
We saw during the lockdowns how people can easily be persuaded by state propaganda to follow the elites’ line. They even have specific departments to carry out the propaganda. This was first openly acknowledged by Cameron-Clegg who boasted about what they tweely called The Nudge Unit. These programmes are now bigger and laws have been passed to limit the range of opinions which may be discussed.
JD Vance was right but maybe he under estimated the degree we have lost free speech.
There is something creepy and sinister about how our country is being taken over. It smells rotten of underground slime. Devious and malign. I would rather the Germans had won in open air combat than this slow strangulation, revealing cowardice and corruption by our “leader”.
The ‘liberal’ establishment that has sold the country down the river is now terrified both about what they’ve done and that people have noticed.
As someone once said: wars happen when the government tells you who the enemy is; revolts happen when you work it out for yourself.
Yes. The liberal establishment is like those parents of ‘trans’ children, who affirmed and encouraged their child, and cajoled and bullied all those about them to accept what they had helped create.
The awful reality that they have mutilated something beautiful is too horrifying to bear, so they persist aggressively with the lie. They will never give it up.
The Conservative Party is moribund and the Labour Party is heading that way. The Lib Dems are only attractive at a local level. Which party can represent the Liberal Establishment?
I expect we will need a (genteel) Trumpian reduction in state run organisations before the authority of the Liberal Establishment is cut down to size. It won’t be pretty.
The Lib-Dems are clowns.
Indeed. It won’t be pretty because state run organizations never respond to “genteel” reform efforts.
There is no such thing as ‘genteel’ reforms any more. The rot will have to be ripped out of Westminster, it won’t be pretty but it is glaringly needed and soon.
“‘Dagenham is home to a proud and diverse community that reflects the industrious and pioneering spirit of its heritage’ boasts the construction site billboard.”
Reads like a Red Guard poster in Beijing circa 1966.
Labour is caught between two stools. Does it seek to recapture the disillusioned white, working class of the Red Wall, or seek to hang on to the Muslim vote that is leaking away to Corbyn’s Independents? It can’t do both.
There is a shocking neglect of attention to the Greater South East outside London (and whilst Dagenham is in London it is really the border area with the Greater South East like many London Boroughs where there was a big vote for out in the EU referendum). Very little social science done on these areas – almost no real ethnography – and not much decent journalism. This piece is good but there is a need to look further. I suggest attention to Bedford, just one of the towns now a commuter zone for London. The Greater SE is the largest region by population in the UK when you include Hertfordshire, Essex and Bedfordshire which were put into the Eastern Region to even up numbers. This is where UK elections will be decided and deindustrialization is the major cultural driver of voting.
Sad consequence of our political class caring more about virtue signalling than dealing UK voters’ needs and aspirations.
The liberal establishment and their lapdog media have several years to destroy Reform. Their agents will be joining, ready to be activated.
I am afraid Britain cannot no longer be saved via the ballot box.
That is possible,m BUT Net Zero is going to destroy any party that backed it AND possibly the very country itself as NO modern society can survive without a reliable grid, AND windmills and solar will NOT provide that. In fact I believe even National Grid is now aware of how close failure could be. Last week they actually sent me an email asking if I was prepared for Power Cuts!
Stopping and then reversing the spiral of decline will not be easy. In fact it will be damned hard. Dropping the lunatic deindustrialising policy called Net Zero will
help but beyond that we have to start repaying our ever increasing national debt which must involve attracting private investment to stimulate sustainable growth and curbing the Welfare State. That means lower taxes and lower benefits – both of which can be divisive. It will take exceptional political leadership to deliver this.
The quickest way to recovery is to scrap vast swathes of European Napoleonic style legislation, and the Public sector and QUANGOS and the mindset you can ONLY do what is allowed. Revert to the English Common Law and the attitude UNLESS it is banned, you can do it. For example. the insanity of rules re energy when selling houses. The law re contracts and honesty plus Caveat Emptor should be the aim. Free the people to achieve what no Government can, to revive economies.
AND stop the vast waste of tax-payers money. We could save a fortune IF we stopped funding arts – Why fund them? Did the Beatles need funding? No, in fact they even wrote a song about the taxman and his 90% demands Does Banksy get funded? Tho it wouldn’t surprise me to find he did.
IF Reform are brave enough the UK could be turned around FAR faster than the pessimists on here think.
“Right-wing populism”
Disappointing.
I would have hoped for a more nuanced and intellihent anlysis at UnHerd. Not more of the same .
It’s certainly ground as fertile for radical Right as there is going to be. It shows the direction we are heading, and have been for some time but with an acceleration driven by Austerity and the Pandemic, is increasing starkly obvious – growing inequality of opportunity and thus outcomes. The juxtaposition of private affluence, public squalor as documented 70 years ago in another Country, pulling apart that which bonds us.
The question for Reform is what solution do they offer other than the red meat on migration? (Let’s assume for the moment we all want massive reduction in illegal migration and less legal because we’ve invested more in training/developing our own etc). What is the coherent Reform offering? I read the Policy section of their website – it, to be fair like most Parties, ducks how it’s really going to pay for changes or whether it’s at all interested in addressing growing inequality. It needs revising in light of Trump’s approach too.
The Farage/Lowe fight is more personal and ego driven but there are elements that relate to major Policy tension. Is this a Party that really rejects neo-liberalism and thus would, ironically, share some of the Corbyn/McDonald economic view (which wasn’t unpopular with red wall Voters), or a Party that just uses migration concerns to gain power for the same old elite benefit that the Tories did? For now that tension may not prevent it winning protest Votes, but anyone truly interested in solutions to our many problems, rather than just a nihilistic attitude, needs Reform and others to properly grapple with the choices we face. Desires and slogans are not Policies that then really deliver the outcome wanted.
The question for Reform is what solution do they offer other than the red meat on migration?
Electoral reform?
Ask yourself: why is a Labour government piling ever more taxes onto working people, small businesses and farmers and taking benefits from disabled people whilst you and everyone you know are still collecting £tens or £hundreds of thousands every year in artificial property price inflation, unfunded pensions and all the rest of it? Because Labour need your vote more than they need those of the people they are taxing into oblivion and whose lives they are destroying with mass illegal immigration and all the other globalist scams designed to enrich the suburban middle class at everyone else’s expense. A de-centralised electoral system along Swiss lines could fix that.
That said, I have as little confidence that Reform is the answer as you do.
THERE SHOULD BE NO electoral reform. FPTP is what we need. Look to Germany and the EU for the impossibility of clearing out the Augean Stables with PR. Germany’s population is increasingly moving to the right, BUT PR elections mean the Government is moving to the left. It forms a coalition with the far left & Greens in order to keep the popular vote suppressed,. FPTP would ensure these parties DO NOT GET IN. Reform are insane IF they scrap FPTP they have now hit the watershed, and they will only achieve what they want via FPTP because that ensure the demise of the Uniparty. Go for PR and Reform will be in opposition watching the Uniparty Coalition destroy the country.
You might be right. What we really need is decentralisation.
What benefit to the UK was there in letting the rubbish of the world into England? It was either incompetence or intentional. Both are unacceptable. Only a radical solution can possibly save the country from further decline and stem the decline of the natives
Veni vidi vicit
Nigel and his Asian friend look set to make Reform another branch of the post-Partition British uniparty.
Then the party members should plan to stop it. BUT not until they get into power. Reform getting in may also end up producing a REAL conservative party , patriotic enough to attract the White Working class AND Reform voters, The White Working Class who by the way appear to refusing to join the military. Tommy Atkins 2025?
A sad but accurate indictment of the Dagenham and Barking that gave us among others, the legends of Greaves, Venables, Brooking and Moore….and the Cortina.
I am not from the London area but when you consider that in 1961 London (and I guess that part of Essex now in Greater London) was 97% white British but by 2021 that percentage had fallen to 37% the rise of the Reform party should not surprise anyone. Even if Reform were to form a government in 2029 (by which time a further 1,5 million may well have joined our shores) I doubt whether the party would be able to do much about it. Even in its darkest days of 1983 and 2019 the Labour Party still had 200 or so Members of the House of Commons. In any event the parties which are either left or left leaning i.e. the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Nationalists and the Greens will do anything to prevent a Nigel Farage premiership possibly by encouraging tactical voting in a multitude of constituencies. The eminent historian Dr. David Starkey believes that the only way forward is to introduce what he calls ‘The Great Repeal Bill’ removing all of what is deemed contentious legislation i.e. the Human Rights Act, remaining in ECHR etc. which has been enacted since 1997 and which would be a mammoth task given all the obstacles. The question is then : If the Reform Party had a comfortable majority would they have the stomach for such a fight?
Many overlook how demographic shifts can intensify over time. Ethnic minorities tend to have higher birth rates and often bring extended family members with them. As certain areas become more diverse, some white residents may choose to emigrate, possible to leave the UK.
I know this might come across as harsh or prejudiced, but it’s the reality I see unfolding.
Tactical voting would NOT work IF ALL BREXIT voters voted for Reform. Farage proved that in the THREE effectively Brexit votes we’ve had. 410 constituencies out of 600 had a Brexit majority. No tactical vote could have beaten them. Farage won a referendum, a European election , then let Boris borrow (then betray) the Brexiteer vote in a General Election. 3 votes, under 3 different voting systems, straight majority, D’Hondt (European Elections) and FPTP for Boris. AND Brexiteers won every one. The ONLY thing that can stop Reform is the Tory voters who think the Tory part is conservative and so vote for them.
Quite frankly, there were more Just Men in Sodom and Gomorrah than there are conservatives in the Tory party (or perhaps in Reform’s leadership, but we can deal with them ONCE in power, NOT before.
Sorry but I don’t accept your argument. It is a fact that since the Referendum in 2016 a fair number of those who voted for Brexit have passed on and I doubt whether they would have been replaced in sufficient numbers. In 2019 yes the Brexit party gained the most seats in the European election but only polled 33% of the vote. And if I remember correctly Nigel Farage disappeared for two years immediately after the referendum. Using phrases ‘such as we can deal with them ONCE in power, NOT before ‘ is simply bully boy tactics more likely to repel any waverers rather than attract them. Like it or not Reform is going to need former Conservative voters if it is to get into power so a period of reflection on your part might be advisable.
“neatly tailored patriotism (this time with an eye on the Donbas)”
The idiocy – it burns!
How can anyone argue, with a straight face, that British patriotism requires us to get involved in a conflict between pro-Russian and pro-Western elements in the Donbas?
Putin is an unpleasant authoritarian; so is Starmer. Putin is content to throw thousands of young men into the meat grinder; Starmer also has no qualms about it.
One of these two villains is intent on demographic change for Britain that is unlikely to be reversible without violence.
Against whom should British patriots direct their ire?
I’m definitely no fan of Starmer… but to lump him together with Putin?!? That’s absurd.
Opponents of Starmer do not have a nasty habit of falling out of high windows. Nor do we have a secret police force to keep people in order (although our police officers do have tendencies in that direction). Nor do we have a policy of assassinating dissidents in other countries.
Opponents of Starmer do have a nasty habit of being sent to prison on trumped up charges, or having the cops break down their door for having the wrong opinions.
Putin is right however. Check out how many Ukrainian brigades, NOT just those labelled Azov, are basically Nazi and only accept like minded Bandera recruits. Putin steps in to protect ethnic Russians, he didn’t take over ALL Georgia or anywhere else, he effectively gave protection to ethnic Russians caught on the wrong side of Soviet drawn borders. Now in Ukraine he may take more than those areas, a land-bridge to Transnistria, everything East of the Dnieper perhaps NATO cause this and now reap what it sowed.
It is also worth noting how Ukraine basically removed the self-determination aspect of the Crimean Republic, so to claim it is Ukrainian is equally historically incorrect. NATO was warned for decades to abide by the promises not to expand East or risk War. The 2014 US coup started this war. Putin is likely to finish it. As Hungary’s Orban pointed out months ago. Ukraine is a failed state only surviving on Western handouts. We in the UK should have nothing to do with that war.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html
Ukraine has many faults and is bedevilled by corruption. As indeed is ALL the ex Soviet Union, Russia included.
But Putin invaded ALL Ukraine with the aim to change the regime into a puppet state and annex the entire country. Only Ukrainian citizens willing to fight and Western military aid stopped that happening.
Mass migration and the loss of well-paid jobs in manufacturing is a lethal combination. Add to that a political establishment that seems to be complacent and not listening, and people become desperate enough to vote for anything.
So what happens when people work out that their new Reform councillors are as hamstrung and ‘useless’ as the Tory and Labour councillor they replaced? What then?
“Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons ! “ etc, etc.
i believe, as Charles Stanhope infers, we are beyond the point of “voting for anything”. Violence seems a possibility based on the febrile nature of the country as it descends into the third world. The article, with its uncompleted multi-vignette approach captures the identity-covulsing experience of Britain 2025. Pop collapsing public services, sustained real-term economic per capita decine, and the loss of any hope of a life that just one generation ago was a Briton’s expectation, and you have the ingredients for major conflagration. Since a new settlement is required between state and citizen (rather than resident) and that path cannot be negotiated – as evidenced by refusals to implement and attempts to overturn the will of the people – the ballot box appears to have been exhausted. I doubt that Reform can represent “containment” at this stage.
“…refusals to implement and attempts to overturn the will of the people…”
This, Remoaners and Establishment Blob, is what you’ve brought us to, laid bare in this and other articles setting out the reality of life for the majority of the indigenous population, which includes 3rd/4th/5th generations of settled immigrants from the mid-20th century. They too, have major qualms about the more recent opening of the floodgates since it threatens their feeling of being settled in their country of birth.
It can’t continue. Those who wilfully ignore the populace at large will have their day of reckoning.
Keep in mind that only the state is armed. The folly of bringing knives and clubs to a gunfight is clearly known at this stage of history.
Twas always thus. Certainly since medieval times. But Civil War, “Glorious’ Revolution, French and Russian Revolutions still happened. The circumstances need to be extreme I grant you, but given that, even some lower level – but nevertheless armed – agents of the State might be driven to don the Phrygian cap.
Depends on who the electorate believe are most likely to cut the legal, political and bureaucratic gordian knot that is preventing positive change.
Hint – no-one believes it will be Labour or the Tories
Reform is not the answer with a Muslim as its Chairman and with Farage deliberately avoiding the elephant in the room.
But the Reform Grass roots can sort that ONCE Reform are in power. We have too many dangers threatening UK society to waste time and give the MSM an opportunity to atack to bother with sorting the leadership now. Get into power, start scrapping all Blair’s reforms, Net Zero etc and then we can sort out our leadership.
Net Zero alone is capable of destroying the very state itself. The Grid WILL fail if Miliband keeps up his insane drive for windmills and solar panels AND if the Grid fails for any length of time, what’s left of the economy will AND JIT food supermarkets will run short of food for long periods.
You also wouldn’t want to be in many modern UK Hospitals where vast areas have NO natural light and where modern medicine rests on electric and electronics. We have had THREE warnings of what power failure for only a few hours means for chaos. Manchester and Heathrow AIrports and
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-46371271
National Grid now advertise on the bcak of buses where I live AND possibly because I’m a shareholder, they emailed me last week with the SAME message “Are you prepared for Power Cuts”
Their website has this,
https://powercuts.nationalgrid.co.uk/power-cut-advice
and ironically on the very day the Tories called the last GE, ths Government webpage went up.
https://prepare.campaign.gov.uk/get-prepared-for-emergencies/
It isn’t just immigration threatening the fabric of the UK Society. Lets get Reform in first, then sort out the leadership. What could the leaders do IF 300 MPS all changed party IF it gets that bad? It is not impossible it will, so plan to change from a position of power not as wannabbees
Yes I probably agree with this, Bill. I don’t agree with a lot of what Farage has been saying recently, but I can hope he’s smart enough to be focused first on winning, and then starting to pull us back from the abyss.
The WEF loving globalist government must do an about-face, fast. You need oil, gas & coal. Net Zero is, and always has been, a scam.
Look to Africa and Syria. Southport, Manchester Arena, the so far non-existent inquiry into Islamic rape gangs are a sign of what is to come. Even if the English don’t start a revolution, Militant Islam will. Christians are massacred in Africa daily, Syria and parts of the Middle East too, BUT no one in the MSM (or even Unherd as far as I can see) ever likes to mention it. The fact that the UK is far from Christian makes no difference. Hindu, Buddhist none will be acceptable to Militant Islam.
Our Prisons are more often than not being run by Islamists AND that in some cases IS reported in the MSM. Ironically Tommy Robinson in jail and isolation for his own protection has highlighted it in the MSM. Perhaps Pakistan is the State we should look to to get a glimpse of the future England, and perhaps the whole of the UK. Israel may end up the only safe place from Militant Islam.
History repeats itself, first as Griffin then as Farage. The ugly soulless urban sprawl and the associated existential vacuity has long been with us. I would be more interested in hearing about the new immigrant economy thriving outside the mainstream which the writer alludes to and then ignores.