--- title: "If AI Causes a Mass Unemployment Crisis, Will the Public Explode Into Violence?" description: "Even if it remains a distant possibility, it's worth asking what kind of future the tech industry has in mind for the toiling masses." date: "2026-05-15" modified: "2026-05-15" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-mass-unemployement-violence" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" --- # If AI Causes a Mass Unemployment Crisis, Will the Public Explode Into Violence? ![A wooden guillotine with a metal blade, shown against a bright red background.]() *Getty / Futurism* These days, the conversation around AI automation and the job market is increasingly focused on "[labor displacement]()," the phenomenon in which new technology eliminates certain jobs but supposedly creates new ones elsewhere. But AI, more than any tech that came before it, represents the possibility of mass unemployment on an unprecedented scale. Because a working class person's wellbeing in a market economy depends almost entirely on their employment, it's entirely possible that — if mass AI unemployment ever does genuinely hit, which [to be fair]() is a major "if" — the conditions for serious social unrest could emerge. In the hotbed of dog-eat-dog capitalism that is the United States, anti AI-sentiment is already on the rise. The data centers underlining the AI boom are [widely reviled](), and a surprising number of workers are admitting to [sabotaging their company's AI]() in the workplace. According to [one survey](), seven in ten people living in the US already think AI will make it harder to find work, a sentiment that isn't helped much by a [horrible job market](). As Royal Military College of Canada political scientist Yannick Veilleux-Lepage argued in a [recent paper]() on AI and populist backlash, "AI generates the structural conditions historically associated with the onset of political violence." That discontent, he notes, stems from increasingly undemocratic decisions: data centers [forced on small towns]() without consent, [nonstop surveillance]() by corporate security firms, and [major government handouts]() for tech industry projects, to name just a few. "As AI company executives acquire more personal security, risk may shift to researchers on open campuses; as corporate campuses harden, risk shifts to the power substations that serve them; where national figures are unreachable, local policymakers who approved the data center become the proxies for the same structural anger," Veilleux-Lepage writes. As [the *Atlantic* notes]() in a recent piece discussing AI backlash, tech executives are already walking back their apocalyptic rhetoric. Where the AI industry once bragged about the coming AI job apocalypse to boost their valuations, it's now downplaying the risks of automation as grievance grows. In 2023, for example, the *Atlantic* notes that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman bragged that "jobs are definitely going away, full stop." These days, his prediction is much more even-keeled: "jobs doomerism is likely long-term wrong," [Altman recently wrote]() on social media. Perhaps he's covering his bases after his San Francisco estate was [firebombed]() by an angry 20-year-old, or maybe his beliefs have really changed. Either way, his problems aren't going away: it isn't about what executives say, but about what they do. **More on AI and labor:** *[Large Study Finds That Replacing Workers With AI Is Backfiring Badly]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()