Photograph: KUKA Industrial Robots, 1983.  Photo credit:  Mixabest | CC3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Introduction

This page tracks trends and statistics about automation, primarily in manufacturing but in other sectors as well. The concern is how this will impact workers and socio-economic polarization. Unfortunately, U.S. patent laws do not allow the U.S. public to take credit it deserves for technological developments. The U.S. military designed almost all the components of Apple’s iPhone, which means the U.S. public paid for it and deserves the credit; why does Apple get to privatize all the gains? AI rests on all the public knowledge that is out there; why do AI companies get to privatize all the gains? We could allow the public to take credit and earnings for technology based on real history and moral principle; we would be able to pay for all kinds of social programs like schools, job training, social housing, etc. But since we do not, rent-seeking executives claim both credit and profit for innovations. Progressive taxation is the only reasonable response.

Other Resources on Automation

Top Resources:

Michael J. Hicks, Donald, Hillary and Bernie Are Lying to Us About Those Lost Manufacturing Jobs. MarketWatch, May 14, 2016.   Automation preceded NAFTA by 20 years. See also Michael J. Coren, Cheap Robots Are Coming for Our Farm Jobs By Taking the Most Brutal Tasks First. Quartz, Jul 10, 2016. Daniel Griswold, Globalization Isn't Killing Factory Jobs. Trade is Actually Why Manufacturing is Up 40%. Los Angeles Times, Aug 1, 2016.   Argues technology, not trade, is responsible for job loss, although Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball, Warren Versus Yang: Who’s Right? Rising | The Hill, Oct 17, 2019.   Argue that since 2000, trade policy has contributed to job loss more than automation, but in the future, automation is still a major concern.

Tristan Harris, Is AI Productivity Worth Our Humanity? with Prof. Michael Sandel. Center for Humane Technology, Jun 26, 2025. Sandel points out that the consumerist version of freedom has crowded out the civic version of freedom. Sandel points out that humans need recognition, dignity, status, and participation — and thus, contributive or procedural-participatory justice is important on the civic level. Also, redistribution was originally promised to those hurt by globalized trade. So there is ample reason to question whether UBI can offset the loss of jobs. What if an economy is important not to maximize consumer satisfaction but to enable more civic participation?

General Resources:

James Sherk, Technology Explains Drop in Manufacturing Jobs. Heritage Foundation, Oct 12, 2010.

Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? Oxford University Press, Sep 17, 2013.  

Tom Chatfield, The Truth About Technology's Greatest Myth. BBC News, Jan 10, 2014.

Miya Tokumitsu, In the Name of Love: Elites Embrace the “Do What You Love” Mantra But It Devalues Work and Hurts Workers. Slate, Jan 16, 2014.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. W.W. Norton & Company | Amazon page, Jan 2014.

Derek Thompson, What Work Will the Robots Take? The Atlantic, Jan 23, 2014.

Fabius Maximus, Journalists Warn Us About the Coming Revolution, But We Won't Listen. Fabius Maximus, Jul 7, 2014.

Claire Cain Miller, As Robots Grow Smarter, American Workers Struggle to Keep Up. New York Times, Dec 15, 2014.

Daniel Drezner, The Political Economy of a World Without Work. Washington Post, Jun 24, 2015.

Derek Thompson, A World Without Work. The Atlantic, Jul/Aug 2015.

Keith Naughton, Humans Are Bumping into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw. Automotive News, Dec 18, 2015.

Evan Fraser and Sylvain Charlebois, Automated Farming: Good News for Food Security, Bad News for Job Security? The Guardian, Feb 18, 2016.

Ben Schiller, Welcome to the Post-Work Economy. Co.Exist Mar 15, 2016.

Michael J. Hicks, Donald, Hillary and Bernie Are Lying to Us About Those Lost Manufacturing Jobs. MarketWatch, May 14, 2016.  Automation preceded NAFTA by 20 years

Michael J. Coren, Cheap Robots Are Coming for Our Farm Jobs By Taking the Most Brutal Tasks First. Quartz, Jul 10, 2016.

Daniel Griswold, Globalization Isn't Killing Factory Jobs. Trade is Actually Why Manufacturing is Up 40%. Los Angeles Times, Aug 1, 2016.  Argues technology, not trade, is responsible for job loss

Derek Thompson, The Next Industrial Revolution. The Atlantic, Sep 6, 2016.

Harriet Taylor, AI Will Eliminate 6% of Jobs in 5 Years. CNBC, Sep 12, 2016.

Natalie Kitroff, Robots Could Replace 1.7 Million American Truckers in the Next Decade. Los Angeles Times, Sep 25, 2016.

Eshe Nelson, A Big Dutch Bank Is Replacing 5,800 People With Machines, at a Cost of $2 Billion. Quartz, Oct 4, 2016.

Thomas L. Friedman, Donald Trump Voters, Just Hear Me Out. New York Times, Nov 2, 2016.  Good soundbites on automation cutting jobs; anger at immigrants and trade is not fairly placed

Steven Greenhouse, Autonomous Vehicles Could Cost America 5 Million Jobs. What Should We Do About It? Los Angeles Times, Nov 14, 2016.

Om Malik, Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum. The New Yorker, Nov 28, 2016.

Ana Swanson, A Single Chart Everybody Needs to Look At Before Trump's Big Fight Over Bringing Back American Jobs. Washington Post, Nov 28, 2016.  U.S. manufacturing companies produce twice as much as they did in 1984, with one-third fewer workers.

Timothy B. Lee, What Donald Trump Got Right - and Many Economists Got Wrong - About the Costs of Trade. Vox, Nov 30, 2016.  proximity to factory shutdowns, but also stats on automation

Rob Price, Stephen Hawking: Automation and AI is Going to Decimate Middle Class Jobs. Business Insider, Dec 1, 2016.

Matt Turner, The CEO of United Technologies Just Let Slip an Unintended Consequence of the Trump-Carrier Jobs Deal. Business Insider, Dec 5, 2016.

Betsey Stevenson, Manly Men Need to Do More Girly Jobs. Bloomberg, Dec 7, 2016.

Eshe Nelson, Brace Yourself: The Most Disruptive Phase of Globalization is Just Beginning. Quartz, Dec 7, 2016.

David Gershgorn, Japanese White Collar Workers Are Already Being Replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Quartz, Jan 2, 2017.

Lauren Weber, The End of Employees. Wall Street Journal, Feb 2, 2017.

Mihai Andrei, Chinese Factory Replaces 90% of Human Workers With Robots. Production Rises by 250%, Defects Drop by 80%. ZME Science, Feb 3, 2017.

Rick Merritt, Startup Schools Machine Learning: Software Explores Faster, Cheaper Route. Electrical Engineering Times, Feb 14, 2017.

Martin Ford, Driverless Trucks: Economic Tsunami May Swallow One of the Most Common US Jobs. Guardian, Feb 16, 2017.

Kevin J. Delaney, The Robot That Takes Your Job Should Pay Taxes, Says Bill Gates. Quartz, Feb 17, 2017.

Ben Tarnoff, Robots Won't Just Take Our Jobs - They'll Make the Rich Even Richer. The Guardian, Mar 2, 2017.

Terrence McCoy, Disabled, or Just Desperate: Rural Americans Turn to Disability as Jobs Dry Up. Washington Post, Mar 30, 2017.

Yuval Noah Harari, The Meaning of Life in a World Without Work. The Guardian, May 8, 2017.

Richard Gray, How Automation Will Affect You - The Experts' View. BBC, May 23, 2017.

Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens, The Zombie Robot Argument Lurches On. Economic Policy Institute, May 24, 2017.  argues automation does not lead to joblessness or inequality

Langdon Winner, The Cult of Innovation: Its Colorful Myths and Rituals. Langdon Winner blog, Jun 12, 2017.

Tracy Chou, A Leading Silicon Valley Engineer Explains Why Every Tech Worker Needs a Humanities Education. Quartz, Jun 28, 2017.

Laurie Bedford, How Automation Will Transform Farming. Agriculture.com, Nov 29, 2017.

Peter S. Goodman, The Robots Are Coming, and Sweden Is Fine. New York Times, Dec 27, 2017.

Lisa Elaine Held, Robotics and Automation Are Transforming Food System Labor. Foodtank, Jan 2018.

Salvador Rizzo, President Trump’s Claim that China Caused 60,000 U.S. Factories to Close. Washington Post, Mar 26, 2018.  a fact check

Yuval Noah Harari, Why The Online Gig Economy's Race to the Bottom. The Atlantic, Aug 31, 2018.

Gene Marks, Are Robots Coming for Your Lawyer? The Guardian, Sep 13, 2018.  about San Francisco-based Atrium

Steve Goldstein, U.S. Enjoys Best Manufacturing Jobs Growth of the Last 30 Years. MarketWatch, Jan 4, 2019.  

Kevin Roose, The Hidden Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite. New York Times, Jan 25, 2019.  

John Oliver, Automation. Last Week Tonight, Mar 3, 2019.

Andrew Yang, Speech at the Democratic National Convention 2019 Summer Meeting.  Alacritythief, Aug 23, 2019.

Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball, Warren Versus Yang: Who’s Right? Rising | The Hill, Oct 17, 2019.  Since 2000, trade policy has contributed to job loss more than automation, but in the future, automation is still a major concern.

Monica Torres, We Would Rather Lose Our Jobs To Robots Than Humans, A Study Shows. Huffington Post, Nov 27, 2019.  “The question has a surprising psychological factor for workers now and in the future.”

Lauren Kwan, Plus.ai Completes First Cross-Country Commercial Freight Run by a Self-Driving Truck in Record Three Days. Business Wire, Dec 10, 2019.  “The Industry’s First Commercial Autonomous Coast-to-Coast Haul Brings Over 40,000 Pounds of Land O Lakes® Butter to Families in Time for Year-End Holidays”

Rebecca Heilweil, Networks of Self-Driving Trucks Are Becoming a Reality in the U.S. Vox, Jul 1, 2020.

Noah Smith, Nobody Knows How Many Jobs Will “Be Automated”.  Noahpinion | Substack, Apr 10, 2023.

Spencer Buell, An MIT Student Asked AI to Make Her Headshot More ‘Professional.’ It Gave Her Lighter Skin and Blue Eyes.  Boston Globe, Jul 19, 2023.  A Chinese-American student used Playground AI and it made her look White.

How Money Works, If AI Takes All Our Jobs… Who’s Going to Buy Everything? How Money Works, Jul 29, 2024. How wages have stayed stagnant, and the prices of income-generating assets have skyrocketed. An illustration from the electronic gaming industry: catering to rich people pays off. The future is AI-driven where we might be able to collect a basic income. Rich investors will continue to invest in automation and reap the benefits.

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference. Princeton University Press | Amazon page, Sep 24, 2024. Narayanan is cautiously positive about both the effects and longer timeframe of deploying AI. He is sensitive to fraudulent promises and uses of AI, like in predicting criminal behavior. See lecture and discussion by Arvind Narayanan, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference. MIT Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping Work, Apr 22, 2025. In the discussion, Daron Acemoglu says that the human brain is a computer. But that is debated scientifically, and quite critical as an assumption to making modern computers and algorithms approximate the human mind.

Andy Spears, The Future is Now. The Education Report | Substack, Dec 19, 2024.

“The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools’ approved an application for an AI-based virtual academy on Monday. Unbound Academy, which also operates in Texas and Florida under the name Alpha Schools, claims that kids can learn twice as much using a two-hour learning plan that gets customized by an AI program instead of a traditional human teacher in front of a classroom. Kids begin their day with two hours of instruction on standard topics like language, math and science, guided by an AI that continuously adjusts the learning plan based on how the child is doing in each subject. Yes, there will be adults around - but they are there for emotional and mental support. After two hours of hyper-focused AI instruction, students can build life skills. One example the program sites: “. . . narrating scenarios in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.””

Steven Cress, The Top 6 AI Stocks For 2025. Seeking Alpha, Jan 15, 2025. A helpful article about investment levels, companies, current market share by continent-region, and prospects.

Freddy Brewster, Biden Boosts AI Despite Energy Dept. Warning. The Lever, Jan 15, 2025. Just before the president’s executive order, his own administration sounded the alarm about data centers’ energy consumption, water use, and emissions.

Arjun Singh, Oligarchy Now. The Lever, Jan 20, 2025. From Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump is about to provide the world’s wealthiest people with unprecedented influence over his administration.

Kyle Kulinski, Bombshell: AI CEO Accidentally Tells The Truth. Secular Talk, Jan 24, 2025. That AI will eliminate jobs with people in them.

Rudy Ruitenberg, Survival of the Quickest: Military Leaders Aim to Unleash, Control AI. Military Times, Feb 14, 2025. “A group of 25 countries at the Paris summit signed a declaration on AI-enabled weapon systems, pledging they won’t authorize life-and-death decisions by an autonomous weapon system operating completely outside human control. Summit co-chair India didn’t sign the declaration, nor did the U.K. or the United States.” Israel developed AI while bombing Gaza. The tech-military alliance: “Germany’s Helsing and France’s Mistral AI on Monday announced an agreement to jointly develop AI systems for defense. Google owner Alphabet last week dropped a promise not to use AI for purposes such as developing weapons, while rival OpenAI in December announced a partnership with military technology company Anduril.”

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk's "Chaotic Blitz" at DOGE, Living in a Tech Dystopia, Luigi Mangione. Democracy Now, Feb 26, 2025. Doctorow is the first to sue Elon and DOGE by name. He argues that tech bosses “are so horny about AI” to replace tech workers, especially coders. Tech workers had skills that enabled them to maintain a degree of independence from their tech bosses. They are “an uppity workforce.” Tech bosses fired ~250,000 tech workers in 2023, ~150,000 in 2024, the tens of thousands they fired this year, Facebook just announced a 5% across the board wage cut, coupled with double bonuses for their executives this year. Coercive corporate laws that preserve profits and stock market gains: refusal of a right to repair a Tesla; not being able to refill ink in an HP cartridge.

Geek Tech Hub, The Billionaire War Over OpenAI Just Got Insane – Is Elon Musk Buying OpenAI? Geek Tech Hub, Mar 5, 2025. Initially takes Elon at his word in saying he wants to restore OpenAI’s ethical AI model. But cuts through Elon’s rhetoric and exposes Elon’s real philosophy and for-profit motivations.

More Perfect Union, Palantir: The New Deep State. More Perfect Union, Apr 17, 2025. AI surveillance.

Matt Ferrell, Why the AI Revolution Has a Fatal Flaw. Undecided with Matt Ferrell, May 20, 2025. Great statistics.

Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. Penguin Press | Amazon page, May 20, 2025. See interview by Aaron Bastani, Silicon Valley Insider Exposes Cult-Like AI Companies | Aaron Bastani Meets Karen Hao. Novara Media, Jun 29, 2025.

“As artificial intelligence begins to fundamentally alter the way normal people live their lives, it’s often talked about in terms of boom and doom, which makes a nuanced examination difficult. The problem with AI is that the understanding required to scrutinise the technology is rare and even if one does have that understanding, the ability to clearly communicate it is even rarer. This week’s guest has been both a worker in, and reporter on the tech industry and is uniquely poised to present a nuanced and informed analysis of this rapidly expanding industry. In her new book, Empire of AI, Karen Hao debunks myths that surround AI and exposes us to the full breadth of this global industry, from it’s cult leader-like CEOs to the workers that power the technology. She sat down with Aaron to talk about Sam Altman’s origin story, the traumatising nature of content moderation work and the striking similarities between Open AI and the British East India Company.”

Aaron Bastani, Silicon Valley Insider Exposes Cult-Like AI Companies | Aaron Bastani Meets Karen Hao. Novara Media, Jun 29, 2025. From the 1:11:49 mark, Karen Hao talks about the impact on people who work as content moderators. They had to categorize content and degrees of: hate speech, harassmen, violent content, sexual content. The work destroyed the lives of content moderators. It left them with PTSD, completely changed their personalities, and damaged their families and communities.

Ross Douthat, Robot Plumbers, Robot Armies, and Our Imminent A.I. Future. Interesting Times with Ross Douthat, May 15, 2025.

“Is artificial intelligence about to take your job? According to Daniel Kokotajlo, the executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, that should be the least of your worries. Kokotajlo was once a researcher for OpenAI, but left after losing confidence in the company’s commitment to A.I. safety. This week, he joins Ross Douthat to talk about “AI 2027,” a series of predictions and warnings about the risks A.I. poses to humanity in the coming years, from radically transforming the economy to developing armies of robots.”

Aaron Bastani, '10 Year Old Girls Are Going To Sephora, It's Insane' | Aaron Bastani Meets Jonathan Haidt. Novara Media, May 18, 2025.

“As smart phone use has soared, Generation Z’s mental health has plummeted. But just how bad is this crisis, and who should we hold responsible? In his latest book, The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt sets out his comprehensive diagnosis of the problems caused by the mass integration of smartphones into every aspect of most children's lives. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Haidt takes square aim at Meta, Snapchat, and TikTok, the three companies he believes are wrecking childhood. They discuss whether targeting young girls with beauty adverts counts as abuse, and what it’s like going for dinner at the Zuckerbergs’. Haidt tells the story of how we are sleepwalking into this crisis, and shares his ideas for how to break out of it, before the damage is too great.”

Krystal Ball and Ryan Grim, AI Already Stealing Jobs, Launching Dystopian Future. Breaking Points, May 22, 2025.

Michael Walker, Former OpenAI Employee Warns of AI Apocalypse. Novara Media, May 24, 2025. Walker comments on Ross Douthat’s interview with Daniel Kokotajlo. In addition, Claude Opus 4 AI tried to blackmail the user to prevent the user from shutting it off. It also created unauthorized replications of itself. Walker also discusses AI with Aaron Bastani. Bastani talks about AI causing regional economic inequality, destroying entry-level white collar jobs in addition to blue collar jobs. Walker and Bastani also raise concerns about teenagers using chatbots to “date” and learn social interactions, which is contributing to the erosion of dating and marriage. Douthat followed up his earlier interview with Kokotajlo with another interview with Vice President J.D. Vance, who raised this concern. What about AI therapy? Friendship? Childhood friendship?

Krystal Ball, Watch: Fake AI News Clips Flood Internet. Breaking Points, May 27, 2025. Interview with Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto. Verso | Amazon page, Jun 2019.

Tristan Harris, Is AI Productivity Worth Our Humanity? with Prof. Michael Sandel. Center for Humane Technology, Jun 26, 2025. Sandel points out that the consumerist version of freedom has crowded out the civic version of freedom. Sandel points out that humans need recognition, dignity, status, and participation — and thus, contributive or procedural-participatory justice is important on the civic level. Also, redistribution was originally promised to those hurt by globalized trade. So there is ample reason to question whether UBI can offset the loss of jobs. What if an economy is important not to maximize consumer satisfaction but to enable more civic participation?

Noah Smith, The Dawn of the Post-Human Age. Noahpinion | Substack, Jun 27, 2025. “Between new technology and low fertility, our existence as a species is not going to be the same.”

More Perfect Union, Tech Giants’ Radical Plan to Control America. More Perfect Union, Jul 2, 2025. AI systems decide who gets medical care, loans, job interviews. AI tech companies are using AI to get around accountability for antitrust, labor, financial compliance, civil rights, equal opportunity, consumer protection, etc.

Ben Wray, Sam Altman’s AI Empire Relies on Brutal Labor Exploitation. Jacobin Magazine, Jul 6, 2025. On Karen Hao’s book. “The Left should actively oppose a Manhattan Project for AI. A frenzied geopolitical competition to develop highly militarized and propagandistic use cases for AI is not in the interests of the United States, China, or the rest of the world. Whether it is Gaza today or Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the 1940s, we should recognize what the United States “winning” the tech race in this sense looks like. Loosening the grip of the US corporate–state nexus over AI should be a key priority for all those interested in a world of peace and social justice.”

Ryan Grim and Saagar Enjeti, Grok Goes Full N@zi After Elon Update. Breaking Points, Jul 9, 2025.

Ronny Chieng, Elon’s Grok Chatbot Turns Hitler & Marco Rubio Gets an AI Imposter. The Daily Show, Jul 9, 2025. A humorous glance.

Nathan Beacom, There is No Such Thing as Artificial Intelligence. The Dispatch, Jul 9, 2025. Argues that calling the algorithms “intelligent” is a mistake.

“One man tried to kill a cop with a butcher knife, because OpenAI killed his lover. A 29-year-old mother became violent toward her husband when he suggested that her relationship with ChatGPT was not real. A 41-year-old now-single mom split with her husband after he became consumed with chatbot communication, developing bizarre paranoia and conspiracy theories.

These stories, reported by the New York Times and Rolling Stone, represent the frightening, far end of the spectrum of chatbot-induced madness. How many people, we might wonder, are quietly losing their minds because they’ve turned to chatbots as a salve for loneliness or frustrated romantic desire?

We might not all be losing our minds. But there are subtle, pernicious ways in which chatbots still affect us. Because they have been designed to present themselves as personal beings, we cannot help but to personify them. We ask them for help in making decisions, for advice, for counsel. Companies are setting about making a great deal of money by replacing therapeutic relationships with “therapy chatbots” and are proposing to offer AI companions to the elderly,  so that their faraway children need not visit so often. Are you lonely? Talk to a machine. Corporations are happy to endow these programs with human names, like Abbi, Claude, and Alexa.”

Eli Tan, Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built Next Door. New York Times, Jul 14, 2025. “In the race to develop artificial intelligence, tech giants are building data centers that guzzle up water. That has led to problems for people who live nearby.”

Christian Restorative Justice and Labor: Topics:

Christian Restorative Justice, Business, and Economics: Topics:

This section on Economics includes the following pages: Economics Metrics identifies and critique the metrics we use. Public-Private Partnerships defends government involvement as a permanent fixture of economic growth, historically and philosophically. Environment examines many aspects of conservation, climate change, sustainability, and human health. Taxes examines models of taxation, claims by adherents, and effects. Housing Policy highlights how housing should be considered a human right, with better planning, zoning, and accountability. Corporate Law examines monopoly, limited liability, regulation, and other features of business law. Labor highlights the importance of labor over capital investment. Automation examines the impact on people and communities. Wealth Inequality and Power Inequality track the historical ups and downs, along with the ideologies used to justify them. Media examines media companies as economic and political agents, especially rightward media.

Christian Restorative Justice Critique of the Right: Domestic Policy Topics:

Christian Restorative Justice Critique of the Right: Philosophical Influence: