Silicon Valley Wants to Save You From AI Layoffs

How wonderfully circular: the tech industry that's busily automating every job in sight now wants to save you from the consequences. The Atlantic's piece 'Silicon Valley Wants to Save You From AI Layoffs' exposes the farce with surgical precision. AI companies are racing to replace human workers while simultaneously preparing to offer 'solutions' — retraining, upskilling, the usual repertoire of corporate deflection. And into this theatre of the absurd steps Senator Bernie Sanders, proposing the AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would seize a 50 percent federal stake in the very companies engineering the displacement. One imagines the CEOs' faces: a mix of contempt and amusement.

The bill, predictably, has zero chance in a Congress that treats corporate tax cuts as a religious sacrament. But even in a fantasy where it passed, what exactly would a government stake achieve? A 50 percent share doesn't stop a company from automating — it just means the government profits from the layoffs too. The 'solutions' the industry itself offers are worse: training programmes that have historically placed fewer people than a minimum-wage job fair. The article notes that these programmes are mostly about optics, not outcomes.

So we're left with the classic Silicon Valley hustle: break the thing, then sell the fix. The only question is whether the public will keep buying. Sanders' proposal at least forces the question: who should own the wealth generated by AI? The answer, for now, is the same people who own everything else. The rest of us get a webinar on 'AI resilience' and a participation trophy. How generous.