AI, Technocracy, and the Looming Job Disruption
At the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, DeepSeek senior researcher Chen Deli warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out most jobs within the next 10 to 20 years. That warning echoes earlier analyses, including a March 2023 report titled “AI Will Lead to 300 Million Layoffs in the U.S. and Europe.” The scale of the risk demands clear-eyed policy and honest public discussion.
“This will shake society to its core,” Deli told the audience at the state-backed industry conference last Friday. He urged AI companies to act as “whistleblowers,” warning the public about the massive labor disruptions ahead. Those are stark words from someone inside the industry.
Deli described the current period as a “honeymoon phase“, a short run where automation boosts productivity without immediate mass displacement. He cautioned that once the honeymoon ends, job losses will accelerate and hit broad swaths of the workforce. He added, “Tech companies should play the role of guardians of humanity, at the very least, protecting human safety, then helping to reshape societal order.”
DeepSeek, founded in 2023, rattled markets this year by releasing a low-cost model that undercuts many existing AI offerings and shifted investor expectations for AI-driven growth. In the U.S., corporate filings and job reports show AI-related cuts are already visible in layoff tallies. Public and private data now point to automation as a growing driver of workforce churn.
- In October alone, Cost-Cutting was the top reason employers cited for job reductions, responsible for 50,437 announced layoffs. Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the second-most cited factor, leading to 31,039 job cuts as companies continue to restructure and automate. AI has been cited for 48,414 job cuts this year.
China’s economy adds a worrying backdrop: official youth unemployment spiked to 21.3% in mid-2023 before authorities stopped publishing those figures. That vacuum of reliable data only deepens concern about how fast automation could worsen already fragile labor markets. Policymakers in both Beijing and Washington should not treat these trends as abstract.
There’s also a long ideological thread to this debate that predates modern AI. Marxists in 1944 fired a broad critique at Technocracy and recorded a chilling line: “Where the economic analyst notes the development of this type of chronic unemployment, (Howard) Scott records nothing less than … the abolition of human labor!” That passage raises the underlying debate about whether technology is neutral or part of a deliberate reordering of economic power.
Those same critics added, “This is a faithful rendering of Scott’s views: technological improvement will itself bring about the automatic collapse of the present system, which will fall of its own weight. The technocrats conceive their job to be merely to sit back and wait for this to happen.” These words still read as a warning about how technological change can be framed as destiny rather than managed policy.
Back home, the political stakes are clear: younger generations face disproportionate exposure to automation-driven disruption while also carrying heavy cost burdens. The Trump administration must recognize this and, to counter the disruption, focus on creating real opportunities and restoring affordability for these generations. If conservative leadership fails to respond, the void will be filled by alternative political promises that offer short-term relief but long-term damage.
Affordability and opportunity, particularly for the youth, will be major political themes in the year ahead.