The rise of artificial intelligence threatens millions of jobs, particularly in skilled professions. Without adequate protections and wealth redistribution, the risk of renewed social unrest and potential disorder is growing.
Following World War I, a million veterans returned home wounded, maimed, and disabled. But above all, they were desperate, disillusioned, and lacked the honor and rewards that had been promised. These men became the tinder that fascism used to transform Italy into a bonfire. As depicted in the series M – The Son of the Century, Benito Mussolini sensed the anger and understood that contempt could be a formidable weapon: “In this putrid hour of peace, these men of war, now without a place in the world, dismissed as one dismisses a servant… I feel their hatred, their rage. It is with substandard material, with leftover humanity, with the last that history is made, their rage is stoked, and revolvers are put in their hands. And with them I will make the revolution.”
The comparison may seem far-fetched, but consider this: artificial intelligence is poised to overwhelm us, with consequences far more dramatic than those caused by the Industrial Revolution or the digital age. As Raffaele Alberto Ventura details in his latest book, a disadvantaged class is emerging – a mass of highly qualified individuals trained to invest significant cultural capital, only to be discarded due to an oversupply of talent. This is the reality of the contemporary cultural labor market. Those familiar with Valérie Donzelli’s film Morning Writing, or even those observing the current job market, will recognize the ignominious fate awaiting an entire generation working in what Luciano Bianciardi termed “cultural labor.”
The consequences of the AI disruption appear to be significantly underestimated. A recent alarm – and a frankly surprising one – was raised by the dismissal of 37 employees, including staff, middle managers, and executives, at InvestCloud Italy, a Venetian firm. The entire workforce was replaced by artificial intelligence, despite the company’s financial stability. But these instances are likely to multiply, leaving thousands of AI victims in its wake. Call centers in Italy employ 80,000 people. Paolo Virzì offered a stark portrayal of the exploitation inherent in these roles in All Life Ahead. That was in 2008. Now, the primary concern isn’t exploitation or precariousness, but outright job loss.
As Cinzia Arena reports on Avvenire, at the beginning of January, 10% of the crisis cases opened at the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy (MIMIT) concerned call centers. A drastic decline in volume and the proliferation of chatbots are jeopardizing these jobs. Remaining employees may be forcibly transferred, even beyond the current 50-kilometer distance limit. Many call centers, over 55 percent, are located in Southern Italy, in Special Economic Zones where there is little other productive activity. Crises are emerging at Enel call centers, Konecta R. (Catanzaro, Ivrea, Asti), and many others.
Across the Atlantic, concerning news is emerging. Meta is preparing to lay off 20 percent of its workforce. It had already sent 11,000 employees home in November 2022, followed by another 10,000. The current cuts could be even larger. Last week, Block, the digital payments company that owns Square, Cash App, and Tidal, announced a 40% reduction in its workforce to make way for AI. Amazon has laid off 14,000 employees. UPS another 14,000. The list is endless, as Massimo Gaggi detailed: in October, U.S. Layoffs totaled 172,000, a 42 percent increase year-over-year. This could be a post-COVID correction, but as Luca Angelini noted in La Rassegna, citing Dario Amodei of Anthropic, “soon artificial intelligence will be able to replace half of intermediate-level professional jobs.”
It is reasonable to expect a dramatic acceleration in layoffs in Italy as well. Thousands of people could soon find themselves unemployed, without pensions, and without any real hope of finding another job. What will become of this generation considered “substandard material,” this “leftover humanity,” veterans of the war of capitalism? Some might be tempted to use their anger and revolt against a system that has failed to protect them. Aldo Cazzullo recently wrote: “At this rate, paying a citizen’s income to those who lose their jobs or who will never find one will become essential. But to finance it, at least a small share of the immense wealth produced by artificial intelligence will have to be allocated to the public budget – hospitals, schools, security, dignified survival of people.”
Latest taxes will be needed, and a stronger social safety net. The political climate does not seem favorable, simply ignoring – or pretending to ignore – these epochal changes already underway. The government should establish a task force, a ministerial or similar unit, to monitor not only the crises in progress but also those on the horizon, working towards workforce retraining and social safety nets. But the alarm still seems distant, as if it were not a certainty but merely an abstract danger. Yet, one should heed the advice of J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, with 300,000 employees, who at Davos announced a plan “to retrain people, relocate them, and provide them with income support.” He also expressed support for government intervention to ban mass layoffs caused by artificial intelligence: “Otherwise,” he explained, “the consequences could be disastrous and there could be unrest and violence.” This echoes Angelini’s discussion of “the revolt of the white-collar workers” in La Rassegna.
The masses of desperate and disillusioned, veterans of the mutilated victory of artificial intelligence, could revolt. And they would be the dry wood at the disposal of a subversive right but also of a hyper-populist left, equally dangerous, for a new bonfire of illusions and democracy.
