AI to Cause White-Collar Unemployment, Societal Destabilization: Sen. Rubio

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speaks during a hearing on worldwide threats in Washington on March 8, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is likely to destroy great swaths of white-collar jobs and create societal instability, said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) after receiving a briefing on AI from intelligence officials.

Mr. Rubio, who was present when the officials briefed senators on the dangers of AI earlier this week, said that American regulations would not prevent the mass adoption of AI or many of its negative effects due to the global nature of technological development.

“[AI is] transnational,” Mr. Rubio told reporters. “So even if we passed all the laws in the world in the United States, and we can regulate how our government uses it, you can’t put genies like this back in bottles.”

“We can regulate whether we invest in being at the cutting edge of it, but we can’t control somebody developing an artificial intelligence capability in another country, and how that’s deployed globally. That we don’t, we can’t control.”

Tuesday’s briefing was the first-ever classified Senate briefing on AI and took place in a compartmented information facility at the U.S. Capitol. Briefers included Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Director Trey Whitworth.

AI to Cause Job Loss, Societal Instability

Mr. Rubio’s comments follow similar remarks made in May by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who testified that AI would greatly destabilize society and eventually lay waste to many jobs that currently exist.

Mr. Altman said that, while AI would do “tasks, not jobs” in the short term, the technology would “entirely automate away” some jobs while creating new ones.

While “there will be an impact on jobs,” Mr. Altman said he was “very optimistic” about the quality of the “future jobs” that would replace them, though those jobs have not been created and may not benefit those who lost the old ones.

Mr. Rubio said that the jobs AI automates away will likely be concentrated in white-collar sectors, whereas previous trends in automation decimated blue-collar jobs in the industrial sector.

“AI will do to higher-educated workers in some fields what globalization did to workers in American factories,” Mr. Rubio said. “It’s going to put some people out of work. It’ll create new jobs and it’s going to eliminate some jobs.”

“It’s going to have a real societal impact,” he added. “I don’t think anyone’s spending nearly enough time talking about how disruptive that will be.”

Mr. Rubio said that the mass loss of white-collar jobs, which will disproportionately hit already debt-burdened college graduates, would likely trigger increased destabilization and societal unrest. To that end, he said, the United States would need to do much more to prepare to mitigate the “negative aspects” of AI.

“This economic piece, we’re not thinking about it enough,” Mr. Rubio said. “We have a bunch of people today in their early- to mid-30s that get paid good money after going to school and developing an expertise that are going to find themselves without a job and they’re gonna be really pissed.”

“It’s not a coincidence that every industrialized society in the world, particularly Western democracies, are being roiled by internal fractures between people who feel left behind, and those who have benefited greatly. And AI is going to be as disruptive except faster, deeper, and in ways we still can’t fully fathom.”

Global AI Development Beyond US Control

Mr. Rubio reiterated that, though the dangers of AI are sure to be felt, there seemed little that could be done to effectively slow its continued development and adoption throughout the globe.

Such was particularly true, he said, concerning AI innovation among adversarial nations such as communist China.

“If they [China] think there’s a strategic advantage for their country to lead on this technology at the next level, they’re not gonna care what the U.S. law is,” Rubio said. “This is not a this is not something we have a monopoly [on].”

To that end, Mr. Rubio said that AI could not be stopped, and Congress would need instead to work toward developing guardrails to insulate the American people from the worst of its consequences.

“The one thing we should all be fully aware of is there’s no way you’re going to stop this and there’s no way you’re going to slow it down,” Mr. Rubio said.

“It’s going to happen. The question is, can we structure it in a way that we benefit, can we maximize the benefits and mitigate against the damage?”

Mr. Rubio is just the latest to suggest an impending outburst of legislative action on AI from Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), for example, introduced his own proposed framework for AI development last month, which called for forums between Congress and AI experts to inform the size and scope of government AI regulation.

According to Mr. Schumer, the federal government must direct the evolution of the technology. Individuals, he said, are just not up to the task.

“If [the] government doesn’t step in, who will fill its place?” he said.

“Individuals in the private sector can’t do the work of protecting our country.”

Joseph Lord contributed to this report.