It's a $500 billion bet.Rent SeekingAs Trump hits the asphalt with a bevy of executive orders, it's becoming clearer what he and his tech bro buddies imagine for the future of US labor: AI doing jobs instead of people, which could be very bad for US workers.News of Trump's $500 billion AI infrastructure project Stargate has spawned a swarm of questions from friends and critics alike.His chief frenemyElon Musk, for example, is questioning where the money will come from, whileNew Scientist tech analyst Jeremy Hsu has questions about the venture's energy consumption.But the question that's probably most important for the American people is: how will this impact employment?The official line is that the unprecedented AI program will create "hundreds of thousands of American jobs," as declared by Trumpwell before the project is even funded.While carving out the Central Park-sized data center may create some temporary construction jobs, though, the entire venture is a bet on the opposite that AI will become so ubiquitous that it will take over economically meaningful amounts of work from humans, especially knowledge workers.As senior writer Kelsey Piper pines inVox, the "only plausible way for investors to get their money back on this project is if, as the company has been betting, OpenAI will soon develop AI systems that can do most work humans can do on a computer.""[That] wewill replace all office work with AI," quips Piper, "which is fairly widely understood to be OpenAIs business model is an absurd plan to spin as a jobs program."Gamblin' ManAt the cost of $500 billion, the task of recouping Stargate's investment via profit will demand nothing short of flooding our productive sectors with AI.Though a massive amount of digital ink has been spilled imagining the theoretical threats AI poses to the job market, it's important to remember that this gamble likely won't pay off.AI is nowhere near ready to assume the responsibility of office workers whose labor more or less moves the largest economy in the world. Of the total US work force, office workers made up 12.2percent the largest occupational group as of May, 2023.Imagine over 18 million people out of the job in a span of a few years,which is basically Stargate's bet. Ifthe program recoups its costs, and that's a big if, the US will still face a crisis in retraining and rehiring millions of workers into new sectors while AI and robots chew into them as well, of course.That's why some urge caution. Dartmouth academic Nathan Zorzi believes that one key to preserving worker's rights is an automation tax, in order to assist those displaced by AI."The proceeds of the tax could be used to finance retraining," says Zorzi, "or compensate displaced workers through federal programs similar to the Reemployment Trade Adjustment Assistance."Though that isn't likely under the new regime, we can dream of a world where common sense policy like Zorzi's prevails; or maybe we could just burn the whole thing down.More on AI and labor: Ordinary People Are Absolutely Repulsed by AI-Powered Customer ServiceShare This Article