The AI Job Crisis Andrew Yang Saw Coming

“AI is to white collar work and the cubicles and the office parks, what the robot arms were to the factory floors. You just don't need as many whippersnappers making your PowerPoint decks and your Excel spreadsheets and learning corporate lingo. When you go into some of these large corporates, you can sense that there are a lot of people whose jobs are not super vital to the operations and growth of that business.”

“Placement rates have collapsed for particular populations, particularly computer science grads coming out of various universities, where you had programs that had placement rates of 94% at high salaries. And those have flipped. Now you have computer science grads out of great programs looking for six months and getting AI-fueled responses. To me, that population is the canary in the coal mine.”

“When I looked up the studies as to how effective government-funded retraining programs were, the efficacy range I found was 0-15 percent, with 15 percent on the high side. Trying to train workers who've been laid off in various jobs to compete against AI strikes me as a loser. It strikes me as the next generation of 'learn to code' which is really stupid; it's chasing moving goal posts.”

“It's that you have a certain threshold, let's call it $35,000 at the poverty level. If you make less than that, then we true you up to that level. If you make more than that, then it's as it was. That's the thing that I'd be thrilled with. I'd be thrilled with a higher child tax credit. I'm thrilled with anything that alleviates poverty.”

“The CEO I had breakfast with who's freaking out, he said three words to summarize the situation: 'Capital displaces labor.' And then he put in parentheses 'with the help of AI.' But he's like, now it's clearer to him than ever because his company is roaring in terms of performance and stock market price, and he's cutting people right and left.”

“My 13-year-old has come to me and said, I think I'm gonna have an AI girlfriend, not a human girlfriend, because it's gonna be a lot easier. Childhood is hard enough if you don't have trillion dollar companies trying to prey on your brain and your soul. If you show me a household where the kids aren't on screens, they have a much, much better shot at flourishing.”

“If you can get someone like Seth Bodnar into the US Senate, all Senate votes count the same. You could have a sane, public-spirited, patriotic senator out of a traditionally red state in Montana. And so that's the kind of candidate I'm boosting and trying to help in the goal of rationalizing our politics come January of next year.”