AI will disrupt knowledge workers first

DEAR FRIENDS,

We aren’t hearing enough from the oligarchs who control U.S. media about the impact AI is about to have on working people. I’ve heard it described as a “technology tsunami.”

It’s mentioned only in passing or buried deep in business coverage so these outlets can later say they reported on it. But it’s not getting nearly the attention it should.

Why would this be? Because it isn’t good news for workers.

Many people still think manual labor or service work will be first to go. They imagine another round of ATM-like technology that puts tellers, cashiers and clerks out of work.

But that isn’t the first target of the AI revolution. It’s knowledge workers.

Attorneys, doctors, high-level managers, entire accounting and engineering departments will fall in the next 12 to 18 months. Their work is the easiest to replace because AI already out-thinks us by orders of magnitude in both scale and speed. If you’re moving things around with your hands, you’re safe for a bit longer, but probably less than 24 months after the desk-bound workforce begins to decline dramatically.

Hiring is slowing in the private sector, and politicians have ramped up their bellowing about the national debt, rhetoric that almost always precedes arm-twisting for austerity programs targeting you and your families. They’re marching out the ghosts of Marx to explain why government must get smaller, which in turn loosens regulations that constrain corporate assaults on the environment.

I heard one billionaire say this morning that we’ve cut 300,000 jobs from the federal workforce in the past year and that that is a good thing. He said it’s beneficial to move those workers off the government payroll and into “productive” private-sector jobs where they can add to national GDP rather than contribute to federal debt.

The billionaires, hundred-millionaires and their managerial layer of enablers drafting in their wake have denied these realities until recently. They’ve compared the AI revolution to the Industrial Revolution; displacement followed by job creation. But if you listen closely now, you hear that claim far less often.

They knew it was misleading then, and now the AI tidal wave is too close to ignore. To retain credibility, they’re adjusting the message. They’re admitting college may not make sense if the goal is employment. They’re urging business owners to adopt and leverage AI or face extinction.

In the same breath, they assure audiences that opportunity is abundant if people play their cards right while ignoring a basic fact of every hierarchical economy. The ratio of kings to serfs, owners to slaves, and bosses to workers, has always been inherently and grossly imbalanced.

I’m submitting this note as a warning because I care about your fate, and the fate of my family and circle of friends.

I urge you to pay attention to AI coverage circulating on podcasts and independent media platforms such as Substack. Seek information broadly.

The mission of our newspaper, The Chief, is to be The Voice of Workers, and to that mission we will remain true, no matter what. We intend to focus more of our coverage on AI issues in 2026, and we’ll be producing a special section later this year on how AI will impact workers and how workers can protect themselves from the negative consequences of AI.

In the midst of this AI revolution, the most powerful tool we have is unity. As a united force, working people can stand up to concentrations of power that hold enormous levers in their hands.

We won’t agree on everything. But we can align on the dignity of human life and on the belief that in a country of great wealth, all citizens deserve freedom, security and the genuine pursuit of happiness.

Yours truly,

Ben August