The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools by corporations and governments has increased drastically in recent years. AI, like any other new technology in history such as the printing press, the tractor, automatic teller machines, and self-checkout at grocery stores, can be used to replace workers at their jobs. In the past, technology was most visibly used to replace factory and agricultural workers. With AI, employers potentially have the ability to replace vast numbers of workers in the service sector, which is the largest employment sector in most high-income countries, including the U.S.
These powerful tools have immense potential to reduce workloads, improve accuracy in detailed work, revolutionize sustainability efforts, and allow workers to produce more with less labor. The U.S. labor movement must be prepared to fight for AI to be used to improve people’s lives, not to drive mass unemployment, climate disaster, war, and increased profits for the ultrarich.
In March and April 2026, AI was the largest reason cited by employers in the U.S. for layoffs, with 21,490 layoffs due to AI occurring in April alone. Massive tech corporations market AI tools as replacements for workers. Billboards purchased by the company Artisan AI in San Francisco and New York spell out the endgame plainly, displaying the message “Stop Hiring Humans.” The dangers of the mass replacement of human workers with AI tools in a country where employment is necessary for access to human rights like healthcare, food, and shelter cannot be overstated.
Once AI is developed, it has a relatively low cost compared to workers’ wages and benefits. Whether early or late in their careers, workers will see their jobs, pay, and future taken away in the name of optimization and “cutting the fat.” Already-high unemployment will grow, and more working-class people will be fighting for even fewer available jobs, with wages that do not match the cost of living. Mass layoffs and an unemployed workforce willing to work for less will drive wages down, and weaken the leverage of unionized workers, even in workplaces not using AI.
In addition to causing layoffs and unemployment, the infrastructure required to maintain AI uses an astonishing amount of energy, water, and land. This has many dangerous impacts on the environment and on human health, and the effects fall disproportionately on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities due to environmental racism. These communities are left with the choice to either accept their poisoned water and air or leave their homes behind.
However, working people are not sitting by the sidelines as these data centers threaten their electricity bills, water access, and communities. Across the country people are fighting against data center projects popping up in their own backyards calling for a moratorium on their construction. While some of these fights have been successful, working communities continue to be exploited by the ongoing efforts of the capitalist class to funnel resources extracted from the working class into their profit-driven models for AI technologies.
In educational contexts, AI affects student-teacher and peer communication and has the risk of reducing students’ critical thinking abilities. Students are more and more reliant on AI to complete assignments and email their instructors. Workers at UE’s graduate worker locals across the country are experiencing the difficulties of teaching students who rely on AI to complete coursework, but also see the potential for AI to be used as an instructional or research aid which could reduce hours of menial labor if used properly and with people in mind.
In the transportation, grocery and manufacturing sectors, which include many UE locals, companies are planning to replace thousands of workers with AI. However, if used in a way that puts workers first, AI could be used in these sectors to increase efficiency to reduce long work days without reduction in pay, increase safety to prevent accidents, and otherwise improve workers’ lives.
AI can be used for progressive and meaningful purposes. The adoption of any new technology should be done with care and consideration to the people and environment that it affects. If we are to automate jobs to make room for a workforce that is more specialized, then we need the political, economic and social infrastructure to ensure that no member of the working class goes without food, housing, healthcare, or income.
In the hands of billionaires and corporations, technology is funneled towards exploiting workers and waging wars all in the interest of turning a profit. AI technology has emerged from the labor of scientists, engineers, and academics, and data generated by working people, but is now being turned against those very workers and the broader working class. The present system here in the US is not designed to solve people’s problems, but profit off of them.
What would AI controlled by working people look like? We believe that, just as workers’ knowledge of our working and living conditions allows us to fight for contracts that meet our needs, we have the knowledge to design an approach to AI that would make workers’ lives better, instead of putting us out of work. In the hands of workers, AI could be used to automate repetitive tasks for more meaningful work, and to reduce the workday with no reduction in pay, allowing us more free time and time to spend with our families.
We therefore call for public and worker control of Artificial Intelligence technologies, and for the end of their use for mass surveillance and as weapons of war, in order to ensure that AI tools are used for the benefit of working people and not to further enrich the capitalist class.