Can Democracy Thrive in a Future with Less Labor?: A Political Analysis of AI Forecasts

Author: Avner Friedman

Field of Study: Economics

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 38

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: In liberal democracies, labor has historically been a source of political power. Beyond voting, workers enjoy political leverage through unions’ advocacy, strikes, and the moral legitimacy attached to productive contribution. Yet some experts in artificial intelligence and industry leaders forecast that AI models may soon be capable of performing a substantial portion of white-collar jobs. While a guaranteed income might cushion the economic impact, it would not replicate labor’s political influence. Scholars offer competing interpretations of this prospect: Srnicek and Batstani view automation as a path to a luxurious world of leisure, others such as Shaleen and Dinerstein warn that AI may concentrate even more economic and political power in the hands of major technology firms. This paper assembles a corpus of near-future forecasts of AI development and evaluates how various scenarios of labor-augmentation or labor-replacement could shift political influence away from employees and towards owners of AI capital.