Trump's AI Push Ignores the Workers Being Left Behind

What Happened

On Saturday, President Trump announced the formation of an "AI Force" and plans to appoint a new "AI Czar," signaling an acceleration of artificial intelligence development without regulatory constraints. In a Truth Social post, Trump called concerns about superintelligence a hoax and vowed the administration would "cherish" AI growth and "not in any way hinder or stifle" the industry. He framed AI as "the next Industrial Revolution" and said it could represent as much as 25% of the country's GDP. The move comes as the industry itself is split: while some leaders like David Sacks (Trump's previous AI czar) argue fears are overblown, researchers like Jacob Coxon from Anthropic have warned companies are "gambling with our lives," and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has urged the industry to slow development and acknowledged that "the industry lied to people about the fact that this technology had risks."

This is a defining moment. The US is choosing speed over safeguards, and betting that the justice system can police harms after they happen. But the real cost won't show up in the courts. It'll show up in paychecks.

What It Means for You

If you work in data entry, customer service, bookkeeping, truck driving, or manufacturing, or if you're supporting someone who does, this matters. The automation wave that AI will accelerate doesn't ask permission. It just happens. And right now, the US has almost no plan to catch the people it displaces.

Here's the concrete problem: according to the Common Good Party's policy analysis, 30% of hours worked could be automated by 2030. That's not speculation. That's trend data. Yet only 24% of workers displaced by automation receive any retraining. Meanwhile, Denmark, a country smaller than Florida, spends 2% of its GDP on active labor market policies: job training, wage insurance, relocation support. The US spends 0.1%.

What does that gap feel like? Picture someone who spent 15 years in a call center. The job disappears. They're 45 years old. They have no training in what comes next. They can't afford to go back to school. Unemployment benefits last 26 weeks, maybe longer in a recession. Their savings are gone in three months. That person is not in some distant hypothetical. They're in your town, right now, and their zip code just got smaller.

Trump's AI acceleration, without a worker transition plan, means more of these stories.

The Bigger Picture

This is the second time in recent memory the US has chosen to let technology run ahead of the people affected by it. After the 2008 financial crisis and the automation waves that followed, millions of workers were told they were the problem, not adaptable enough, not skilled enough, not entrepreneurial enough. The real problem was policy. The government had the tools. It chose not to use them.

The AI moment is bigger because the speed is faster and the scale is wider. The CBS News article notes that 63% of Americans say AI needs more regulation. That's not paranoia. That's people looking at their own security. And they're right to worry, but not just about superintelligence in the abstract. They're worried about their job, their kid's job prospects, whether the rules will protect them or just protect the companies building the systems.

The European Union passed its AI Act in 2024. It's not perfect, but it exists. It sets requirements for high-risk AI systems, transparency, worker protections. The US has no federal AI law. Six companies control more than 90% of frontier AI development. That concentration of power in an unregulated space is not a recipe for the common good. It's a recipe for gains going to shareholders and costs going to everyone else.

Trump's appointment of a new AI Czar, after the previous one (David Sacks) stepped down from that role in March 2026, signals that the administration is serious about speed. It's not signaling anything about fairness.

Where This Goes

What happens next depends on whether Congress pushes back. Right now, the momentum is all toward acceleration with no guardrails. That's not inevitable. It's a choice. A different choice would look like: yes, develop AI, but require companies to help fund worker transition for the jobs that disappear. Yes, race with China, but also protect Americans who lose work in the race. Yes, embrace the technology, but write rules before the harm is locked in.

The Common Good Party believes in growth. Real growth. Not growth that works for billionaires and leaves everyone else behind. That's not progress. That's extraction dressed up as innovation.