Nearly 100M jobs could be lost to AI, automation, Sanders warns

(NewsNation) — Artificial intelligence and automation could wipe out nearly 100 million U.S. jobs over the next decade, according to a new Senate report released Monday.

The report — issued by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent — warns that advances in new tech threaten jobs across industries from retail to health care. It found that 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants and 47% of truck drivers are at risk of being replaced.

Democratic staffers on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where Sanders serves as ranking member, used ChatGPT to identify which jobs are most vulnerable — a shift they described as the rise of "artificial labor."

According to the model's projections, the occupations facing the biggest potential losses include:

• Fast food and counter workers: 3.3 million jobs
• Customer service representatives: 2.5 million jobs
• Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers: 2.4 million jobs
• Retail salespersons: 2.4 million jobs
• Stockers and order fillers: 2.2 million jobs

Overall, 15 of the 20 most exposed roles could see more than half their current jobs replaced. Even hands-on roles — like registered nurses and personal care aides — could be affected, the report found.

"The same handful of oligarchs who have rigged our economy for decades — Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and others — are now moving as fast as they can to replace human workers with what they call ‘artificial labor," Sanders said in a statement.

He warned: "If we do not act, the result could be economic devastation for working people across this country."

The report comes as major companies are already using automation and AI to trim payrolls. Amazon said in June it had deployed its one millionth robot, putting it close to having more robots than humans in its warehouses, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently credited AI for allowing him to reduce customer-support roles over the past year.

The Senate report's findings echo Labor Department projections that anticipate steep job declines over the next decade, including about 310,000 fewer cashier jobs (-10%), nearly 180,000 fewer office clerks (-7%) and 150,000 fewer customer service representatives (-5.5%).

"The agricultural revolution unfolded over thousands of years. The industrial revolution took more than a century," the Senate report said. "Artificial labor could reshape the economy in less than a decade."

Still, other research has found little evidence that the so-called AI jobs apocalypse hasn't arrived — at least not yet.

A recent study from researchers at the Yale University Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution found that the share of workers in jobs with high, medium and low AI “exposure” has remained largely stable since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022.

Even so, Sanders' report argues that waiting to see how the labor market adapts would be a mistake. It proposes several measures to ensure "workers, not just corporate CEOs and Wall Street" benefit from technological change — including a "robot tax" on large corporations, profit-sharing requirements and guaranteed paid family and medical leave.

"We must stand up to the greed of Big Tech and make sure the future of artificial intelligence is a future that works for all of us — not just the people on top," Sanders said.