“Watch this,” I said, pulling up my audio recording app. We were in my friend’s kitchen, voices echoing off the tile floor and granite countertops. The sounds of boiling water and bubbling oil masked our voices. I hit record and left the phone to capture our muddled conversation for a minute or two. Adobe, a software company, has a web program for podcasters that uses AI to clean up voices in audio recordings. With the tap of a few buttons, I had uploaded our clip and let the program do its thing. The result was unreal – it sounded like we had a professional studio setup. We could even choose how much of the boiling, bubbling echoes we wanted to keep. It was wild.
I’m a video editor, so these programs are in my daily toolbox; fixing mistakes, polishing, adding, subtracting. AI is in everything I do. And soon, I will not be a necessary part of the process at all. Just the act of recording in the kitchen signals the loss of thousands of jobs: sound technicians, microphone manufacturers, audio engineers, software developers, and more, all replaced by AI. Sure, there are jobs for those developing AI programs, but the numbers don’t add up. 41% of employers globally plan to reduce their workforce as AI automates certain tasks, and research shows Black and Brown workers will feel the brunt of those reductions.
Luckily, I am part of a union that requires the company I work for to have a certain amount of people on-set and behind the scenes fulfilling their tasks. This is unusual, though, in media production. I’ve had far more non-union jobs than union ones, and I’ve seen the impact AI has had on those non-union positions. In my industry alone, graphic designers have been replaced by AI artwork creation tools; editors have been phased out to allow AI to proofread, edit, and write; and floor managers who once controlled teleprompters are replaced by self-scrolling AI programs. And for me, despite the fact I am in a union, I still do not have a retirement plan, a healthcare plan, or a financial safety net for when work is slow. Something has to give.
Our social structures are not built to support our current needs, and it’s already showing its failures in the age of AI. I’ve been following this chain of thinking around jobs; what can we do about AI replacing so many people? Which brought me to, why do we force people to rely on organizations, businesses, and corporations for survival? Even some people with jobs don’t have adequate healthcare, or financial resources, access to food and water, and housing. The threat of AI is, in some ways, a distraction from the real issue – that jobs alone do not solve the problems of housing, hunger, and poverty. AI is just lowering a wrecking ball on an already crumbling house.
We need to build a new house, and one with a strong foundation. We need a universal basic income and universal health care to get us through this. There is no other way we will survive under Capitalism as it forces a narrative on the importance of jobs, while desperately underdelivering on what securities jobs offer, and then replacing those already weak resources with AI programs. It’s a zero-sum game for us workers, and it will not get better. Limiting the use of AI, while nearly impossible now, would not fix the current problem of emaciated or nonexistent social programs for workers. And more jobs in the job market will not fix the problem, either, as they already fail to be enough.
A robust program of universal care is the only way to make sure we stay healthy, mentally, physically, and financially. Housing should be available to everyone, healthcare should be available to everyone, income should be available to everyone. In this, one of the richest countries in the world, our resources are not scarce, and AI is proving it will make businesses and individuals in the AI market richer still. We can provide these things to everyone. Our system needs to stop equating work with survival, especially as it charges ahead with its plan to replace workers with AI. It’s a failing system that has much more room to fail further, unless we build a new one that truly meets the needs of its people.
Dain is a news and documentary videographer and editor focused on equitable storytelling for social, racial, and environmental justice. He is also a trained death doula and enjoys drinking tea.
