{"id":116459,"date":"2025-07-21T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&p=116459"},"modified":"2025-07-21T10:56:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T14:56:16","slug":"technological-unemployement","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement","title":{"rendered":"In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0was originally published on\u00a0Substack<\/a>. It is reprinted with permission of the author.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First: Picture a future in which immense productivity boosts churn out staggering wealth, like a molten river of gold lava flowing from a volcano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second: Picture a future that is a jobless wasteland, with unemployment rates permanently at Great Depression levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, imagine a third future \u2014 a future in which the two preceding futures combine to form a bizarre new reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the many smart people trying to figure out what AI will become and what effects it will have on society, a considerable number think that third future is likely. Some are AI executives working hard to make it happen, such as Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the major AI players, who made headlines when he said he expects that within the next one to five years AI will drive unemployment rates up to 20%<\/a>. That is higher<\/em> than the unemployment rate through most of the Great Depression. Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel laureate and the \u201cGodfather of AI,\u201d recently said that if he had children deciding on a career path, he would tell them \u201ctrain to be a plumber.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently on his podcast,\u00a0Ezra Klein talked<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0Kyla Scanlon<\/a>\u00a0about the attention economy and the fate of Gen Z, which inevitably brought the conversation to AI \u2014 and the possibility of a future in which spectacular productivity gains exist alongside mass unemployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mid-way, Klein said something particularly important.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

I think debates like that \u2014 whether we should welcome this productivity increase or try to stop it \u2014 will become much more salient in a way that people aren\u2019t ready for yet, because they\u2019re so used to technology just being adopted \u2014 as opposed to debated.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s exactly right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most important features of American democracy in the 50 or so years of the digital era is how little serious debate about technology there has been. Not \u201cdebate\u201d in the sense of arguing \u201cthis technology will lead to that.\u201d That sort of talk is constant. I mean \u201cdebate\u201d in the sense of: \u201cDo we want to do this? Maybe we shouldn\u2019t.\u201d That\u2019s because the idea that we can collectively choose how new technology is deployed \u2014 or even\u00a0whether<\/em>\u00a0it is deployed \u2014 is simply absent. When legendary investor Charlie Munger said crypto should be banned, he made a million eyes go wide. Ban a new technology? Inconceivable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For decades, particularly in the United States, but also across much of the Western world, the assumption underlying almost all discussion of technology is that what will be, will be. We cannot stop it. We cannot shape it. We must simply adapt to it as best we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that assumption is wrong. Categorically wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By that, I don\u2019t mean morally wrong. I mean incorrect<\/em>. As the history of technology amply demonstrates, we do not have to simply accept and adapt. We can, collectively, choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put it in pugilistic terms, if the relationship between people and technology were a boxing match, humanity has always been the stronger fighter. We still are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a boxing match is zero sum and the relationship between people and technology is decidedly not that. A much better metaphor is that of ballroom dance partners: They move together, each influencing the other, in an endless loop, which can be beautiful when it\u2019s done right. But the dancers aren\u2019t identical. One leads, deciding what the next move will be and communicating to the other with subtle gestures, shaping the dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always have. Still do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s actually the theme of my new series<\/a> in this newsletter<\/a>. And the book I\u2019m working on now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used some of that fancy AI to create a little logo for the series. Here it is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Metallic<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the interesting features of the discussion Ezra Klein had with Kyla Scanlon is how ahistorical it is. They talk about the present. They speculate about the future. But they say nothing about history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet every theme in their conversation has deep historical roots. Some stretch back decades. Some, centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, as luck would have it, I\u2019ve been reading an old and largely forgotten novel whose congruence with that podcast is downright eerie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s one illustration from the novel: The protagonist, Paul, is onboard a train which is entirely automated. Everything from the \u201call aboard!\u201d to the checking of tickets to the driving of the train is done by machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul finds himself seated next to a retired conductor who grumbles that no machine could do everything he did in his 41 years working on the train before automation eliminated his job. \u201cI\u2019d like to see one of them machines deliver a baby,\u201d he grouses. \u201cAnd I never seen a machine yet that\u2019d watch out for a little girl three years old all the way from St. Louis to Poughkeepsie.\u201d And his final complaint: \u201cWith machines, you get quan<\/em>titty, but you don\u2019t get qual<\/em>-ity. Know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This prompts Paul to be amazed \u201cat what believers in mechanization most Americans were, even when their lives had been badly damaged by mechanization. The conductor\u2019s plaint, like the lament of so many, wasn\u2019t that it was unjust to take jobs from men and give them to machines, but that the machines didn\u2019t do nearly as many human things as good designers could have made them do.\u201d To me, that sounds a lot like Ezra Klein noting that Americans aren\u2019t used to debating how or whether technology should be adopted \u201cbecause they\u2019re so used to technology just being adopted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author of this long-forgotten novel? Kurt Vonnegut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Bernard Gotfryd<\/figcaption>
Author Kurt Vonnegut in 1965\n<\/div><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“Player Piano<\/a>” was Vonnegut\u2019s first novel, published in 1952. It got good reviews but was barely noticed and didn\u2019t sell. It took 15 years and five more novels before Vonnegut became a star following the publication of “Slaughterhouse-Five” in 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But today, for anyone interested in the history of technology, and our relationship with technology, “Player Piano” is fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A player piano<\/a>, as everyone knew in 1952, is a piano that uses paper rolls dotted with punched holes to play tunes by itself. A human is only needed to put the roll in and mindlessly pump a pedal. The machine does the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In “Player Piano,” Vonnegut imagined a future in which automation has turned all of America into one enormous player piano. Industry is fantastically efficient and productive under the leadership of a single technocratic organization that runs all of society like a perfectly tuned and oiled machine. Punch cards sum up credentials and aptitudes and assignments, and every person\u2019s fate is determined by the arrangement of the holes on their card. For the few with the right combination of IQ and degrees, the system makes them engineers and managers. They are rich. But the fate assigned to most is mediocrity \u2014 working as a poorly paid lackey to the technocrats \u2014 or unemployment. No occupation has been spared. The engineers are even on the cusp of creating \u201celectronic writers.\u201d (How chilling\u2026.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that the novel was published in 1952, and we, today, think of the 1950s as a golden era of full employment and rising prosperity, Vonnegut\u2019s concept may sound out of sync with his times. It was not. In fact, “Player Piano” is very much a product of the years leading up to its publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Depression of the 1930s had generated staggering levels of unemployment. As it ground on with little sign of relief, one of the leading explanations for the disaster was technological: Production had become so efficient, it was widely believed, that most labour was surplus. And as science and technology advanced, the problem would only get worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fears of permanent mass unemployment temporarily eased when millions of men were sent to fight the Second World War, but many observers \u2014 including economists \u2014 believed that the dismal process would resume in the post-war years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the context in which Vonnegut wrote “Player Piano.” And Vonnegut had a personal perspective on the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His father was a successful architect whose practice was ruined by the Depression, and his family, like so many others, plunged from wealth and social standing into poverty. It was a shattering experience for both his parents. Vonnegut was 10 years old at the height of the Great Depression. Witnessing his parents\u2019 degradation \u2014 he later said his mother turned bitter and vicious \u2014 must have been searing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agony experienced by the unemployed in\u00a0\u201cPlayer Piano\u201d\u00a0is less material than spiritual.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Vonnegut went on to study mechanical engineering before dropping out to join the US Army in 1943, and it\u2019s hard not to see the author in his protagonist, Paul, a mechanical engineer who turns against the system. Why do we let them take jobs from men and give them to machines? Paul wonders. That\u2019s the nagging theme of the novel, one which defenders of the status quo \u2014 the engineers and managers of the technocracy \u2014 have developed glib answers for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At an organizational retreat, the technocracy\u2019s top people watch a play in which the system is literally put on trial, with an unemployed worker named \u201cJohn\u201d brought to testify. Seeking to convict the system, a man identified only as \u201cradical\u201d examines the witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happened to your income after the system was introduced, the radical asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, sir, when the defense work and all got going before the war, seems to me I could make better\u2019n a hundred a week with overtime. Best week I ever had, I guess, was about a hundred and forty-five dollars. Now I get thirty a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo be exact, John, your income dropped about eighty per cent,\u201d the radical notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To cross-examine the witness, and defend technocracy, a young engineer steps up.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

YOUNG ENG. John, tell me\u2014when you had this large income, before the star arose, did you by any chance have a twenty-eight-inch television set?<\/p>\n

JOHN. (Puzzled) No, sir.<\/p>\n

YOUNG ENG. Or a laundry console or a radar stove or an electronic dust precipitator?<\/p>\n

JOHN. No, sir, I didn\u2019t. Them things were for the rich folks.<\/p>\n

YOUNG ENG. And tell me, John, when you had all that money, did you have a social insurance package that paid all of your medical bills, all of your dentist bills, and provided for food, housing, clothes, and pocket money in your old age?<\/p>\n

JOHN. No, sir. There wasn\u2019t no such thing then, in those days.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

But John has all this abundance now \u2014 thanks to technology and technocracy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John is not deprived. John is blessed!<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

YOUNG ENG. John, you\u2019ve heard of Julius Caesar? Good, you have. John, do you suppose that Caesar, with all his power and wealth, with the world at his feet, do you suppose he had what you, Mr. Averageman, have today?<\/p>\n

JOHN. (Surprised) Come to think of it, he didn\u2019t. Huh! What do you know?<\/p>\n

RADICAL. (Furiously) I object! What has Caesar got to do with it?<\/p>\n

YOUNG ENG. Your honor, the point I was trying to make was that John \u2026 has become far richer than the wildest dreams of Caesar or Napoleon or Henry VIII! Or any emperor in history! Thirty dollars, John\u2014yes, that is how much money you make. But, not with all his gold and armies could Charlemagne have gotten one single electric lamp or vacuum tube! He would have given anything to get the security and health package you have, John. But could he get it? No!<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the novel, the play is written by one of the technocracy\u2019s wealthy managers, but slip in a reference to universal basic income and it reads like something Marc Andreessen would write with the help of ChatGPT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice that the young engineer\u2019s defence of technocracy rests entirely on material conditions. Sure, John is out of a job and his income has shrunk. But he has a 28-inch television set and healthcare. What more could a man want?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play doesn\u2019t touch that question because the technocrats are oblivious to it. But it\u2019s at the heart of the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Vonnegut drills home in “Player Piano” is that a job is much more than a way to get material goods and services. It provides purpose, dignity, even identity. The technocracy cannot compensate for the loss of those. It isn\u2019t even aware they have been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agony experienced by the unemployed in “Player Piano” is less material than spiritual, a reality made brutally apparent in the form of a make-work organization grandly called the \u201cReconstruction and Reclamation Corps.\u201d Its \u201cworkers\u201d aren\u2019t fooled. They flush sewers and patch potholes. Anything to keep them busy. Everyone knows them as the \u201cReeks and Wrecks.\u201d They call themselves<\/em> that. They are surplus. Disposable. They are nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Materially, they\u2019re getting by. Spiritually, they are crumbling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Book<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These are old themes. Ancient, even.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the century prior to the Great Depression, waves of new technologies turned skilled artisans into unskilled machine-tenders, or left them entirely unemployed. Some tried to smash the machines taking their livelihoods. The Luddites are famous even today, thanks to the addition of \u201cLuddite\u201d as a word heaping scorn on those who oppose technological progress, but there many others like them. “The Silesian Weavers” is an 1844 poem by Heinrich Heine about German weavers \u2014 the Luddites were weavers, too, as textiles were among the first products to be mechanized \u2014 who led a futile rebellion against wage cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in the early 19th century, this was an old and familiar pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the way back to the Middle Ages and beyond, some clever person would occasionally figure out a way to do the work of 10 men with two, and these attempts to improve productivity were met with hostility from all those doing that work. But how did the ruling classes adjudicate these conflicts? That is something that has changed in modern times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the distant past, the potential benefits of disruptive technology were often little appreciated by anyone save those directly pocketing the savings. And disruption was seen as inherently bad in conservative societies where preservation of the status quo was a sacred duty. So when new technologies were met with hostility, rulers often backed opponents and banned the technology. There is even a theory \u2014 which I find compelling \u2014 that a key reason why Britain was the first to undergo Industrial Revolution is that Britain was the first country in which the ruling classes refused to side with the status quo and permitted the widespread adoption of labour-saving technology. (See Carl Benedikt Frey\u2019s brilliant “The Technology Trap<\/a>.”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago, in the brief period when fully autonomous vehicles were widely believed to be months away, and they would quickly erase millions of jobs driving trucks, far-right commentator Tucker Carlson said flatly he would ban the technology. It caused a stir. Ban a brilliant new technology? Simply because it would eliminate jobs? It sounded bizarre. Yet what sounds bizarre in modern America was common in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Many tech boosters are far too glib about the costs of technological disruption.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For the record, I am very much not a Luddite. Machines may indeed wipe out jobs, but they can also make life easier and better, and the wealth they generate can create new jobs, often of a sort that can\u2019t be imagined at the time they are eliminating jobs, leaving later generations much better off. Early in the 20th century, AT&T was the largest employer in the United States, and half its employees were operators manually connecting phone calls. Automation erased those jobs. Nobody misses them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I agree with the technology boosters: Humanity has been vastly enriched by accepting the disruption that comes with technological advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But many tech boosters are far too glib about the costs of technological disruption. Try telling a 45-year-old man who finds himself permanently unemployed \u2014 his education, skills, and experience all rendered useless \u2014 that he should be happy because the technology that put him out of work is boosting the nation\u2019s GDP and one day his children may get some unforeseeable new type of job. He will hit you, if he\u2019s not stoned on fentanyl. And he would be right to. Because what too many tech boosters shrug off as nothing more than a period of disruption and adaptation \u2014 a mere blip \u2014 may be the remainder of his life. People deserve better than to be consigned to the Reeks and Wrecks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many tech boosters also tend to blithely assume that, in time, tech automatically lifts all boats. That\u2019s simply not true. As Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson showed in “Power and Progress<\/a>,” the wealth created by new, productivity-boosting technology does not automatically flow to the benefit of all but is instead more often captured by a relative few. Only with concerted political effort have the few been compelled to share with the many. Remember how I said \u201cwe choose\u201d if and how to adopt new technology? This is a big chunk of the choices we need to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, there is always the possibility that, to use the old phrase, \u201cthis time is different.\u201d It is true that, for more than two centuries, the adoption of disruptive new technology that eliminates jobs has created more wealth and abundant new forms of employment. And it is true that, as in the 1930s, many people in the past have incorrectly believed that \u201cthis time is different\u201d and high unemployment was permanent. That history suggests fears of an AI-induced era of unemployment overwrought. But they do not guarantee it. As always, this time really may be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between these extremes, I can imagine a thousand other futures.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to so many others, who seem to think they have it all worked out, I am utterly uncertain about how AI will unfold, in part because I recognize that forecasting that future requires far more than an ability to forecast the technology\u2019s development, as difficult as that is. There are hosts of political, cultural, and economic questions involved. Change the answers to any one of those and the future changes. I think that is a forecasting challenge beyond the capability of anyone. Or any machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as so often, we are left to simply contemplate the range of possible futures. And it is immense. I can easily imagine a future in which AI development using existing techniques hits insurmountable walls (as it has done multiple times over the almost seven decades since the term \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d was coined), the AI investment bubble bursts, and the wilder hand-waving of the past couple of years \u2014 good and bad \u2014 looks ridiculous in a decade or two. But I can also imagine a future in which AI produces great disruption, wealth, and such amazing new jobs and life-enhancing abilities my grandchildren pity me for having lived in these benighted times. And I can imagine a future in which AI has spawned a handful of tech trillionaires along with hundreds of millions of unemployed white-collar workers, and my grandchildren\u2019s only shot at a job is working for the private militias guarding the rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between these extremes, of course, I can imagine a thousand other futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had to bet, I\u2019d put my money on some middling, contradictory, confused, messy scenario containing far less drama than any of the more extreme possibilities. The reason for that bet? New technologies have routinely inspired extreme expectations in the bewildering first few years of their development \u2014 The future will be heaven! No, the future will be hell! \u2014 but what actually unfolded was neither heaven nor hell but the middling, contradictory, confused, messy world we live in. So that\u2019s the base rate. And a good forecast always starts with the base rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am, however, quite confident about one particular forecast: We will talk a lot more about technological unemployment in the next few years. Which makes the long history of technological unemployment important to grapple with now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can start by reading “Player Piano.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article<\/a> was originally published on Substack<\/a>. It is reprinted with permission of the author.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the history of tech demonstrates, we do not have to simply accept and adapt to AI. We can, collectively, choose what to do with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":116471,"template":"","ftm_taxonomy_fields":[46,60,2202],"ftm_taxonomy_challenges":[],"ftm_taxonomy_statuses":[36],"ftm_taxonomy_hidden_tags":[],"class_list":["post-116459","ftm_article","type-ftm_article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ftm_taxonomy_fields-ai","ftm_taxonomy_fields-books","ftm_taxonomy_fields-opinion","ftm_taxonomy_statuses-featured"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nIn humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As the history of tech demonstrates, we do not have to simply accept and adapt to AI. We can, collectively, choose what to do with it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the history of tech demonstrates, we do not have to simply accept and adapt to AI. We can, collectively, choose what to do with it.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Freethink\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/technological-unemployment-thumb.jpg?resize=1200,630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"We do not have to simply accept AI. We can choose if and how to adopt it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"15 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always.","description":"As the history of tech demonstrates, we do not have to simply accept and adapt to AI. We can, collectively, choose what to do with it.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always.","og_description":"As the history of tech demonstrates, we do not have to simply accept and adapt to AI. We can, collectively, choose what to do with it.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement","og_site_name":"Freethink","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":630,"url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/technological-unemployment-thumb.jpg?resize=1200,630","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_description":"We do not have to simply accept AI. We can choose if and how to adopt it.","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"15 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement"},"author":{"name":"kristinhouser","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#\/schema\/person\/e45bf79276f6c14454ee4e1dfa7aca8c"},"headline":"In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always.","datePublished":"2025-07-21T15:00:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement"},"wordCount":3099,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/technological-unemployment-thumb.jpg?quality=75","inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement","url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement","name":"In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always.","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/technological-unemployment-thumb.jpg?quality=75","datePublished":"2025-07-21T15:00:00+00:00","description":"As the history of tech demonstrates, we do not have to simply accept and adapt to AI. We can, collectively, choose what to do with it.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/technological-unemployment-thumb.jpg?quality=75","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/technological-unemployment-thumb.jpg?quality=75","width":3200,"height":1800,"caption":"MTStock Studio via Getty Images"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/technological-unemployement#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Articles","item":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/articles"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"In humanity\u2019s dance with technology, people lead. Always."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/","name":"Freethink","description":"Move the world","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#organization","name":"Freethink Media","url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/logo.svg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/logo.svg","width":651,"height":124,"caption":"Freethink Media"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#\/schema\/person\/e45bf79276f6c14454ee4e1dfa7aca8c","name":"kristinhouser","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ff88759e0ed195de655c7703310050f17b921ae4fc276d7eb5930cddafa694f9?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ff88759e0ed195de655c7703310050f17b921ae4fc276d7eb5930cddafa694f9?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"kristinhouser"},"url":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/author\/kristinhouser"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ftm_article\/116459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ftm_article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ftm_article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ftm_taxonomy_fields","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ftm_taxonomy_fields?post=116459"},{"taxonomy":"ftm_taxonomy_challenges","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ftm_taxonomy_challenges?post=116459"},{"taxonomy":"ftm_taxonomy_statuses","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ftm_taxonomy_statuses?post=116459"},{"taxonomy":"ftm_taxonomy_hidden_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ftm_taxonomy_hidden_tags?post=116459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}