Women’s work has been historically devalued and disrespected. In today’s workplace, U.S. women only make 81 cents to a man’s dollar. Funneled into low-paid jobs that are often more routine, and therefore more susceptible to automation, women are three times more likely to be replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Women of color are in an especially dire situation. They are far less represented in AI development. They make up more than 30% of workers in jobs that are considered the most “AI-vulnerable” despite being less than one-fifth of the overall workforce. And they are already underpaid, with Black women at 67 cents, Latinas at 61 cents and Native American women at 58 cents compared to men’s dollar. Over the course of a 40-year work life, this can mean a horrific income gap of $500,000.
As AI usage spreads, forecasts say that 86% of job loss will be in administrative, office-based, knowledge-work positions, such as secretaries, administrative assistants, bank tellers, paralegals, human resource specialists, receptionists, payroll clerks, bookkeepers, insurance processors, government workers — all of which are over 70% women.
Bosses plan to replace these workers with chatbots and AI models to cut labor costs. They will still need a few humans who are proficient in AI usage to supervise. But since women have had fewer opportunities to gain AI tech and science/math skills, it’s likely that the jobs will be filled by male software engineers displaced by AI coders.
Built-in biases
Artificial Intelligence intensifies workplace inequities in several ways. Because it is trained on vast amounts of historical data, AI mirrors and reproduces existing social biases. This will accelerate ongoing and deepening sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism and other oppressions.
In hiring, AI resumé screeners can be biased in deciding who appears “most capable” or dependable or best aligned with corporate values. They may also underrate women’s lived experience, including time spent outside the workforce in unpaid caretaker roles.
Immigrants and refugees are also losing out on jobs as AI is used in hiring. Automated screening of non-native English speakers will cost them dearly. A study by the non-profit Upwardly Global found that education and work experience outside the U.S. is not properly recognized or credited by AI. Applicants are thus rejected or placed in lower skilled jobs.
Another reason the AI reality falls short of Musk and Zuckerberg’s glorious promises is that the white male-dominated development of AI omits participation by most of humanity — women and people of color. Their ideas, values, and life experiences are crucial to a true representation of intelligence and human knowledge. Policies and priorities around AI are now controlled by the bosses and tech bro oligarchs bent on increasing profits by eliminating human labor.
Building a custom workforce
This whole situation fits in nicely with another front in the war on women and people of color. It suits the plans of Project 2025, in which authoritarians and Christian Nationalists push women back into the home to be obedient “trad wives,” produce more babies, and have no say in society.
As robotics improve in the long term, traditional men’s jobs will also be threatened and eliminated, because the capitalists’ goal is to reduce human labor to avoid paying benefits and to bust unions. They seek a silent, submissive 24/7 workforce.
Unions are fighting to protect their members from AI on the job. National Nurses United (NNU) is pushing for contracts that would allow RNs to overrule any AI decision and would require union approval before AI is installed. SAG-AFTRA, representing actors and media professionals, calls for retraining support and employee buyouts before layoffs. But these reactive measures do not counter the hasty, unsafe development and inherent biases of AI, not to mention the environmental impacts.
Mass public organizing and activism are needed. Labor must join with other movements and fight for more than up-skilling and buyouts. Demands could include 30 hours work for 40 hours pay, and a public campaign for a pause in the AI race.
Since the Industrial Revolution, a war has raged between advances in technology and the increased exploitation of the working class, coupled with the destruction of the Earth.
The question is: who will run the technology and for whose benefit? Ultimately, a socialist economy is the answer — with working-class control of the means of production. This includes AI and all of its labor saving benefits. It should be up to humanity, not billionaires, to decide how and whether AI should play a role in our future.
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