From the social-liberal center to the left there is a policy or proposal vacuum in the face of the impacts on society of the multidimensional technological revolution underway, despite its immense reach. Up to now, the response has been limited to defending or protecting users (including teenagers), rather than as citizens or workers. On the current right, don’t look for them either: they do not exist. It seems they are not needed, although there are great doubts within. Lacking this approach could lead to very negative consequences.
What policy responses are missing in the face of the labor impact of artificial intelligence in Europe?
A portion of Trump’s electoral appeal was his nods to the middle class and working people hit in their jobs and wages by globalization and automation. It was the natural base of the Democratic Party, which neglected it. For a reason, after Obama came Trump. A lesson that has not been learned.
Although it was not his topic, it is significant that, for example, Mario Draghi’s famous 2024 report on The Future of European Competitiveness, or his recent Leuven speech, only mention, without going into depth, the need to “preserve” the “social inclusion,” one of the defining elements of the European model. They only allude to retraining for the new technologies for those displaced or downgraded in the labor market. Their focus is the vague but pressing need to boost competitiveness and growth. The same applies to the Letta Report — Much more than a market —.
“Although the social impact of artificial intelligence is still uncertain, it has already begun, and it will be profound. Not only in jobs or tasks, but in the way of working and in the workday”
Although the social impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is still uncertain, it has already begun, and it will be profound. Not only in jobs or tasks, but in the way of working and in the workday. There is an urgent need for a Beveridge Report (1942) at a European scale for the AI era, as the one that propelled the British Welfare State—and by extension the welfare state of other European democracies—after World War II. Not to “preserve” that state, but to adapt it to the new realities, needs, and possibilities.
Why could a “Beveridge Report for AI” update the European Welfare State?
Business leaders are increasingly openly discussing the impact that new technologies, particularly the recent and ongoing developments in AI, are having and will have on work, employment, at least on tasks. We have already addressed it. For example, to cite Geoffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of current AI, who says that “it is clear that many jobs are going to disappear: it is not clear that many jobs will be created to replace them”. And if they are created —they are being created—, they will not be the same ones leaving as entering this market. This trend began long before ChatGPT and other generative AIs, only that the latest technological advances are boosting it even more. We may be facing, at least for a number of transitional decades, a sizable pool of workers who are “surplus,” many of them middle class. Anyone can observe this around them—in the vacant bank branches, the culling at law firms, or the ground staff at airports, to name three visible examples that directly affect the middle classes.
Measures have been taken to defend users against the colossal tech firms, but so far there are few policies in the realm of social and labor rights, except for the protection of the riders or delivery workers. The Digital Rights Charter launched by the Spanish Government in 2021, or the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles, in addition to lacking effectiveness, have not only fallen short on the social issue, but they were drafted before the explosion of generative AI based on large language models.
“It is necessary to prepare for the future the people who are already in the labor market, or even those who are graduating, whose fate begins to worry”
One would expect political parties to engage more with these topics in their electoral platforms, something they did not do previously. There are some researchers and centers that do strive to put forward proposals to mitigate the social impact of the technological revolution. In a recent book, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, Carl Benedikt Frey of the Oxford Internet Institute argues for the need to adapt institutions to these challenges, as they shape incentives and power relations for innovation. The statu quo is fictional when everything is changing, and doing nothing, or barring the field, leads to a setback.
From UGT, José Varela Ferrio, calls for “mass retraining plans, the construction of minimum incomes, and structural reforms in the labor and economic spheres” in response to layoffs due to “technological causes.” It is necessary to prepare for the future the people who are already in the labor market, or even those who are graduating, whose fate begins to worry.
Of course all that, among other examples, would have to be financed. Since Khan Academy—founded by Sal Khan, who proclaimed that students should receive their lessons online and then go to class to do their homework—, Sal Khan proposes that tech companies donate 1% of their profits to an independent fund that would invest in training. Sal Khan proposes that the tech giants cede 1% of their profits to an independent fund dedicated to investing in training. In the ongoing debate in the Anglosphere, the question is how to share with people the enormous benefits—or the rise in stock value even without profits—of some technology companies, especially AI. It is a fight against the plutocracy of the big tech.
Outsourcing to algorithms for labor decisions in companies, highlighted by Luz Rodríguez, raises new problems. In her latest book, this professor of Labor Law proposes studying whether workers, on platforms or, by extension, all those affected by technology, receive compensation for the data they generate and that the companies for which they work exploit for economic gain. Something that, from fiction, we have anticipated.
“Despite the undeniable difficulty, if nothing is done to curb or compensate these effects, movements like Trumpism could gain ground”
Michael Mazarr, from RAND, states that success is not only about achieving technological advantage, but about managing AI’s impact as a social phenomenon. Alongside measures to develop competency and foster awareness and skills about AI, he proposes supporting AI applications that widen opportunities across society.
We must align AI with human needs. Yet these are not just programs or software, but, as noted in a Barclays report, “the next frontier of AI is physical: humanoid robots — robots in human form — are leaving the laboratories and entering the real world”. The idea of taxing the robots (to their companies?) resurfaces.
Despite the undeniable difficulty, if nothing is done to curb or compensate these effects, movements like Trumpism could gain ground. Or one or more waves of Ludditism, anti-machines, anti-AI could arise. Who will end up waving this banner? Some will. As Michelle Goldberg notes in the United States, attitudes toward technology do not follow party lines, despite Trump’s unconditional support for AI and his lack of regulation. It could also happen in Europe.
Or something worse: that citizens end up preferring, despite everything, to be governed by AI rather than by politicians. Already in 1964, in his Summa Technologiae, Stanislaw Lem warned against the dangers of what he called electrocracy.
For liberal-left to regain the support of the middle and working classes and strengthen democracy on the basis of a “shared prosperity,” Nobel laureate in economics Daron Acemoglu believes it is necessary to focus on productivity, work and wages, pushing a “pro-worker” AI, though he does not clearly explain how, when companies go in another direction.
“Social democracy will have no future if it does not see these problems and provide answers. It is time to reflect on how technology can undermine, or strengthen, the solidarity policies embodied in the Welfare State”
Beyond the unavoidable industrial dimension, which is finally advancing in Europe, the left and the center must provide responses to the enormity of the challenge. The right, extreme, seems not to need it in the name of unconditional subservience to Washington, the freedom of tech enterprise, and the power of the tech moguls, despite directly affecting everyone’s life. Social democracy will have no future if it does not see these problems and provide answers. It is time to reflect on how technology can undermine, or reinforce, the solidarity policies embodied in the Welfare State, which is one of the great political inventions, now eroding for years. With concrete political proposals. To act at national, European, or even global levels. Not even the European Commission has delved fully into this topic, despite proposing aPact on AI for the enforcement of law on this technology.
Let us begin with a “Beveridge Report for AI” at a European scale and adapted to the new challenges. This report, officially Social Security and Related Services, was commissioned during World War II by the British wartime government from the liberal economist William Beveridge, who drafted it together with his wife, the mathematician Janet Philip, skilled at disseminating it through the then non-digital networks. That, at least, was forward-looking. Let us not wait for the effects of AI to be fully realized.
Beveridge proposed reforms in the public welfare system then in place to address what he called the “five giants” on the road to reconstruction: need, disease, ignorance, misery, and idleness. Five giants which, with different parameters and from different levels of life, still remain in our techno-nomic societies. A new Beveridge Report should address, at the very least, the impact of AI and automation on employment, working conditions, and the financing of a welfare system that is even more necessary for all and especially for the sUrPlus workers. Not forgetting the impact of advances in the biological sciences in areas we have not entered, which can bring more welfare and also more inequality. The revolution is not only inevitable, but already underway. Let us not dive into it blindly. There is no other option.
