May Day in the age of AI: The new war on workers

On May 1, overmuch of the satellite celebrates International Workers’ Day, oregon May Day, honouring workers’ rights and the past of the labour movement. A nationalist vacation successful galore countries, May Day has traditionally been stifled successful the United States, a federation that has ne'er been large connected either planetary labour solidarity oregon workers’ rights.

The US and its tagalong to the north, Canada, alternatively observe their ain exclusive Labour Day successful September. But the origins of May Day prevarication successful the US itself, where, connected the archetypal of May successful the twelvemonth 1886, wide strikes connected behalf of an eight-hour workday broke retired and were rapidly met with deadly constabulary repression.

Nowadays, workers’ rights are nether occurrence from different direction: artificial intelligence (AI), which threatens the precise close of workers to, well, work.

In January, Amazon – the second-largest leader successful the US aft Walmart – moved to laic disconnected 16,000 employees, the latest circular of sweeping layoffs connected relationship of AI. In October 2025, The New York Times reported that the institution had plans “to regenerate much than fractional a cardinal jobs with robots”.

The US presently leads the satellite successful AI improvement – an unsurprising improvement fixed the country’s peculiar narration with die-hard capitalism and the thought that workers should execute similar machines. What much logical adjacent measurement than to regenerate them with machines altogether?

I, myself, mostly effort to avoid the US astatine each cost, having recovered it sufficiently creepy and alienating agelong anterior to the AI takeover. On a caller travel to San Francisco, the world’s starring AI and tech hub, I recovered that the scenery had been rendered ever much dystopian by ubiquitous billboards and different signage pushing AI down everyone’s throats.

I was successful municipality visiting a young Colombian antheral I had met successful the Darien Gap, the deadly migration crossroads of the Americas, arsenic helium made his mode northbound successful pursuit of the American imagination oregon astatine slightest capable wealth to survive. He was present moving operation successful the San Francisco Bay Area, which I had figured was astatine slightest 1 assemblage immune from AI disruption, but the net informed maine that I was wrong.

Driving into the city, it was hard to spot a billboard promoting thing but AI. One section advertizing campaign, courtesy of the San Francisco-based AI bureau Artisan, had repeatedly made headlines for its overtly callous nature. The company’s posters offered a scope of advice: “Stop Hiring Humans”; “The Era of AI Employees Is Here”; and “Artisans Won’t Complain About Work-Life Balance”.

Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, 24, has been quoted arsenic defending the run arsenic intentionally “provocative” and suggesting that his firm’s purpose wasn’t truly arsenic inhumane arsenic it seemed: “We’re going aft replacing the enactment that radical don’t privation to bash truthful they tin bash the enactment they really enjoy.”

But unluckily for Carmichael-Jack, determination is thing called reality. And for a full batch of folks successful the existent world, a occupation is often a means to enactment nutrient connected the array and screen the basal necessities of beingness – an progressively formidable undertaking, particularly successful a state that prefers to money genocide successful Gaza and war connected Iran alternatively than supply affordable lodging and healthcare options for its ain people.

In different words, it’s improbable that the mean Amazon idiosyncratic who loses their occupation to AI is spontaneously going to find themselves doing thing they “enjoy” – like, I dunno, being the 24-year-old CEO of an AI bureau successful California.

As Liza Featherstone, the writer of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights astatine Walmart, told me: “The billionaire people seeks a satellite without workers, oregon astatine slightest 1 successful which workers consciousness arsenic extraneous and precarious arsenic possible. They emotion AI due to the fact that they don’t privation to woody with quality workers’ demands to beryllium treated arsenic … humans!”

To beryllium sure, precarious employment is an intrinsic constituent of capitalism, arsenic workers who unrecorded successful fearfulness of losing their jobs are little apt to talk up for their rights.

Just look astatine the caller sordid past of firm union-busting by the likes of Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, which person relied connected patently amerciable and underhanded tactics similar firing pro-union workers and threatening to withhold wellness benefits from employees who don’t toed the anti-union line.

And fearfulness successful the workplace volition nary uncertainty lone intensify arsenic “AI employees” that don’t attraction astir rights commencement snatching up jobs near and right.

In the end, AI is not lone the culmination of longstanding firm efforts to person the Earth’s inhabitants into digitally addicted automatons. It is besides the culmination of a lengthy firm way grounds of idiosyncratic oppression.

Just for the hellhole of it I googled “problems with AI” to spot what the AI Overview effect was. According to the reply I got, problems ranged from “immediate method failures and ethical dilemmas to semipermanent societal and information risks”.

As of aboriginal 2026, the overview specified, “key issues” included the “tendency to make mendacious information, perpetuate biases, and origin important biology and information information risks”.

Of course, nary of this has stopped the firm plutocrats from betting connected AI. On April 29, The New York Times revealed that, successful conscionable the archetypal 3 months of this year, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft had “plowed a full of $130.65 cardinal into superior expenditures, mostly spending connected information centers that powerfulness A.I.”

Meanwhile, definite elite executives person noted that AI presently costs mode much than quality workers. But ne'er caput specified trivialities.

For his part, US President Donald Trump is each astir AI, and a March press release from the White House announced that the Trump medication is “committed to winning the AI contention to usher successful a caller epoch of quality flourishing, economical competitiveness, and nationalist information for the American people”.

But it goes without saying that determination is small country for quality flourishing successful a post-human world. And connected this May Day, arsenic connected each different day, determination should beryllium nary country for AI.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.