Andrew Yang makes a 'catastrophic' prediction that could impact nearly 40 million workers

People can be optimistic or cautious about the surge of AI, but no one can deny its impact on every industry and everyday life. Now, American businessman, attorney, and political commentator, Andrew Yang, has issued a warning that years of automation would upend the nation's workforce. Yang, who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, predicted that AI could replace about 40 million jobs sooner than expected, in a recent CNN interview.

Yang mentioned that his 2018 prediction of self-driving cars threatening millions of jobs of mostly male truck drivers with limited education. At the time, he told the New York Times that such a shift could "destabilize society". Now, Yang has told CNN's Michel Smerconish that his prediction is no longer hypothetical, with self-driving cars already on the roads. Yang emphasized that "44% of American jobs are either repetitive manual or repetitive cognitive and thus could be subject to AI and automation." His observation aligns with the latest study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which found that AI may already be capable of replacing about 12% of American jobs, accounting for $1.2 trillion in wages.

While the study shared an estimate, the effects of AI can already be seen in the current job market. This year alone, companies like Amazon, Walmart, IBM, HP, Fiverr, and more have cited the development of AI in recent rounds of layoffs or planned layoffs to make room for AI. Earlier in September, Roman Yampolskiy, a computer science professor at the University of Louisville and an AI safety researcher, predicted that 99% of jobs will be eradicated in the next five years by AI. However, Yang pushed back on the claim, saying, "It's going to get bad. I certainly don't think 99% bad." Using his 44% vulnerability benchmark, Yang told CNN that about 30 to 40 million positions could be eliminated by AI. "That would be catastrophic for many, many communities," he said.

Yang's proposed solution to the disruption caused by AI was his signature policy idea, 'a universal basic income,' that pays every American adult $1,000 a month. He explained that since the US produced roughly $85,000 in GDP per person in 2024, as per the World Bank, Yang suggested that a $12,000 annual Freedom Dividend "seems pretty modest and reasonable." He added that the guaranteed income will help workers make it through the disruption and maintain economic stability. Yang suggested that the funds for this should come from the firm's driving of AI's exponential growth.

Citing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's comments to Axios about a "token tax" that the government should collect from AI companies, Yang said the growth of such companies can help raise "big numbers very quickly." However, Yang warned that the stipend will not be the cure for everything. He added that people would still need a purpose, structure, and a sense of community to live and thrive. "We could be doing much, much more for the millions of Americans who are going to be displaced," Yang said in the interview.

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