When Artificial Intelligence (AI) appeared a few years ago, many analysts warned that AI and robots would dominate the world and that we would all face mass unemployment.
At that time, however, these scenarios were more speculation than reality. Without the necessary investments, Artificial Intelligence, in the form we know it today, would never have come true, notes author and analyst Niklas Albin Svensson.
AI is used by capital as a weapon for waves of layoffs and employee skills
Everything changed since 2023, when investments by large technology companies made this huge development possible. Since then, hundreds of billions have been channelled into the construction of new data centres.
This huge and extremely speculative investment explosion immediately caused fears of creating a new technology «bubble», which has been likened to the railroad stock bubble in the 1840s.
The Monopoly Race
Today, investors are driven mainly by fear of losing their chance (FOMO) against ever-increasing stock prices, a feature of economics «blisters»At the same time, however, Artificial Intelligence is a completely new market, which is expected to be sold very quickly, resulting in everyone trying to consolidate their position on it before it is too late.
How technological giants sacrifice workers at the altar of AI
That's why investors give it all to this race. A bubble, however, means that companies are betting huge sums, with the certainty that they will not yield all these bets. Inevitably, some businesses will go bankrupt, while only a few monopolies will emerge as the ultimate winners.
The wave of redundancies: From Britain to the US
This treaty is already proving to be particularly problematic, as it has begun to leave its mark on employment. In the United Kingdom, 7% of large enterprises have already made use of AI to reduce its staff. The most direct impact is reflected in the vertical fall of new job ads, which have decreased by 38% in highly exposed professions such as developers and translators. This obviously affects young people entering the labour market much more than any other social group.
In the United States, during 2025, large companies invoked Artificial Intelligence as the main cause for 54,000 layoffs. This figure accounted for 5% of all redundancies for this year, however the trend is dramatically accelerating. In the first three months of this year, this percentage climbed to 13%. Last month, in fact, AI was the main cause for 25% of all redundancies in the country.
The myth of bourgeois economists and the harsh reality of capital
Some urban economists argue, defending AI, that new technology, while destroying, will at the same time create new jobs, believing that the free market will solve all problems. To support their arguments, they invoke previous leaps in productivity, but which took place when capitalism was relatively healthy.
In today's period, such technological innovations only succeed in further intensifying the crisis. It is typical that, in recent months, Amazon has fired 30,000 employees, with cuts specifically focused on middle management executives. Immediately after, however, the company announced its intention to hire 10,000 experts in Artificial Intelligence, replacing just one third of the staff it had just fired.
Similarly, Meta (face mother), went on to fire 8,000 workers, leaving another 6,000 vacancies, in her attempt to appease her shareholders, who were worried about the exorbitant cost of investment in AI.
Professions on target: Planning, Law and Medicine
So far, developers have received the biggest blow, as their employers are more familiar with using these new technologies. However, the effects are expected to spread to other professions. Anthropic is developing a «Legal» version of its model, which is very likely to cause the legal profession exactly what the version did «code» in programming.
At the same time, studies from Harvard Medical School revealed that Artificial Intelligence is extremely effective in medical diagnosis. Some research showed that AI was capable of detecting cancer before even being diagnosed by an expert doctor, proving that the field where this technology is prominent is pattern recognition.
Of course, there is a time lag in all of this, as companies will not change their way of operating overnight, but it is given that future consequences will be massive.
Specialization, intensification and social rage
Today the prospect of a large-scale unemployment, which will begin by hitting university graduates, is realistic. Those who manage to maintain their jobs will be faced with the rapid devaluation of their skills (deskilling), as they will be substantially reduced to simple «supervisors» AI systems.
AI threatens to trigger the rage already felt by workers against the system and employers. It will not be the first time in history that automation and expertise lead to radicalization of an important part of the bourgeoisie and the working class.
If Artificial Intelligence and robotics (which is already highly developed in China) were in the hands of the working class, they would have the potential to free humanity from labor toil, becoming the basis for a communist society. On the contrary, in the hands of capitalists, this technology brings unemployment and greater stress of work and hours for those who remain in employment.
Ήδη υπάρχουν αναφορές για υπαλλήλους που αναγκάζονται να εργάζονται περισσότερες ώρες εξαιτίας της AI. Αυτό δεν αποτελεί κάτι καινούργιο. Όπως εξήγησε ο Καρλ Μαρξ στο Κεφάλαιο, οι νέες μηχανές, αντί να βελτιώνουν τις συνθήκες εργασίας, οδηγούν σε επιμήκυνση της εργάσιμης ημέρας για τους εργάτες, οι οποίοι αναγκάζονται να δουλέψουν πιο σκληρά προκειμένου να διασφαλίσουν ότι οι καπιταλιστές θα κάνουν απόσβεση της επένδυσής τους.
- Ο Niklas Albin Svensson γράφει εκτενώς για τις παγκόσμιες κρίσεις, όπως η κατάρρευση τραπεζών (π.χ. SVB) και η χρηματοπιστωτική αστάθεια. Επιπλέον, αναλύει τις οικονομικές επιπτώσεις γεωπολιτικών συγκρούσεων, εξετάζοντας ζητήματα όπως ο πληθωρισμός, το χρέος και η ύφεση.
