In brief
- Bernie Sanders is calling for a 32-hour work week and a “robot tax” on corporations.
- Lawmakers are split over whether his plan helps or hinders tech growth.
- Experts say AI’s speed and long-term job impact remains uncertain.
In a YouTube video released Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) warned that artificial intelligence could erase nearly 100 million American jobs within the next decade, calling it an “issue of enormous consequence” that would deepen inequality unless lawmakers acted.
His critique was based on a Senate report released on Monday by the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s minority staff, led by Sanders, outlining how robotics and AI could accelerate profits while undermining job security.
The “Artificial Labor” revolution
The video marked Sanders’ most recent call to protect workers against the threat of AI, calling out prominent tech billionaires, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison, among executives investing “hundreds of billions” to replace human labor.
“Why are they doing that? Is it because they want to improve the lives of the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay for groceries, health care, housing, and education?” Sanders asked. “Maybe they’re staying up nights worrying about working families—but I doubt it.”
In the report, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT to analyze U.S. employment data, estimating that automation could displace 97 million jobs in ten years, including major shares of fast-food, accounting, and trucking roles.
“As a member of Congress who opposed the trade agreements that decimated communities across the country, I—like most Americans—want to see manufacturing rebuilt in the United States,” Sanders said. “But new factories won’t mean much if the jobs are done by robots instead of people.”
The report tied the automation boom to decades of rising productivity and flat wages. Since 1973, worker output has increased 150% while corporate profits have surged 370% and real wages have fallen by about $30 a week, according to the report.
The broader trend
Sanders’ statement comes at a time when the threat of AI and robotics to workers is shifting from prediction to reality, as automation begins reshaping industries from manufacturing to medicine.
The International Federation of Robotics reported that global service robot adoption surged in 2024, driven by labor shortages, aging populations, and Robot-as-a-Service models. Professional sales rose 9% to nearly 200,000 units, led by transport and logistics robots at 102,900 (+14%), medical robots up 91% to 16,700, and cleaning robots up 34% to over 25,000.
“Elon Musk has said he wants Tesla to build millions of robots. And what will these robots do?” Sanders said. “They’ll replace the men and women working in our factories, warehouses, restaurants, and other workplaces.”
In October 2024, speaking at the annual Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk predicted that humanoid robots would outnumber people within two decades.
“I think by 2040, probably there are more humanoid robots than there are people,” Musk told the audience. “Every country will have an AI or multiple AIs, and there will be a lot of robots, way more robots than people.”
However, economists warned that automation is advancing fastest in offices, not factories, reshaping the professional workforce once thought safest from machines.
Jobs economists say are most immediately exposed include software engineers, human resources specialists, paralegals and legal assistants, customer service representatives, financial analysts, and content creators.
Sanders’ policy proposals
To blunt the impact of AI on human workers, Sanders proposed a legislative framework that includes five key points:
- A 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay
- A “robot tax” on firms that replace employees with machines
- Worker-elected boards with 45% employee representation
- Profit-sharing and employee ownership equal 20% of the company stock
- Expanded union rights, paid family leave, and a ban on stock buybacks
Sanders isn’t alone in calling for new protections against AI and robotics. In his campaign for California governor, futurist Zoltan Istvan proposed a universal basic income and “a humanoid robot in every home,” arguing that automation could create prosperity only if its benefits were shared broadly.
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