AI and the Threat of Job Loss

Reading Time:  15 Minutes

The Value of Work

The functional capacities realized in work are an invaluable psychological achievement for the individual and constitute the foundation upon which civilization is based. It is difficult to over-emphasize the centrality of work to human experience: work, and the coupling of work and reward, has deeply informed the biological, emotional, intellectual, psychological, interpersonal, ethical, cultural, ideological, political, social, and spiritual development of the human species. Work’s indispensability to mental functioning has resided in its capacity to bind the individual to reality by engaging attention and energy in activity necessary for survival. Work – which evolved with the capacity to cooperate – has also bound the individual to the community and evolved as a response to group survival needs. ¹

Separation from the Workplace

The centrality of work to mental health and functioning becomes conspicuous when participation in work activity is disrupted for a prolonged period. While the circumstances surrounding separation from the workplace differ, the consequences of involuntary separation are almost invariably negative.² Psychiatrists who have studied the problem tend to regard separation from the Workplace as a Psychiatric Emergency, as disastrous consequences can easily ensue when the problem mismanaged. A review article from 2021 (Couser, et al)² cites the following findings:

• Unemployment is a health hazard often worse for mental well-being than marital separation or divorce (Clark, 1994).
• Specific adverse mental health outcomes are highly correlated with lack of employment, including risk of hospitalization due to traffic accidents and self-harm, depressive, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, and subjective sense of well-being (Jurisic, 2017; Waddell, 2006; Barmia 2008; Strully, 2009; Tsai, 2005).  In one study, job loss due to employer closure increased the odds of a new health condition by 83% (Strully, 2009). 
• Unemployment increases the risk of death. One large study of middle-aged men who experienced unemployment in the five years after initial screening were twice as likely to die during the following 5.5 years as men who remained continuously employed.  (Morris, 1994).  Another study showed that unemployment significantly increases the risk of being dead at the end of follow-up by nearly 50% (from 5.36 to 7.83%).  In that study there was no noted increased risk for death by motor vehicle accidents or homicides, but there was an increase in suicide-specific mortality as well as an increase in the risk of dying from disease other than cancer or cardiovascular disease (Gerdtham, 2003). 
• Age at becoming unemployed appears to be a factor influencing risk of death.  One study found that for high-seniority male workers, mortality rates in the year after displacement were 50%–100% higher than would otherwise have been expected.  This effect of unemployment on mortality hazards declined over time from initial displacement, but there was still a 10-15% increase in annual death hazards even 20 years after displacement.  (Sullivan, 2009).  Unemployment has similarly been associated with increased mortality risk for those in early to middle career but less so for those in late career (Roelfs, 2011).
• Even when looking at retirement (i.e., voluntary separation from the workplace) as the means of entering the ranks of the unemployed, relatively healthy men have been shown to have increased risk of mortality compared with men who remained continuously employed (Morris, 1994).  A large Greek study showed retirees (compared to those still employed) had a 51% increase in all-cause mortality.  A five-year increase in age of retirement was associated with a 10% decrease in mortality.  In another study of petrochemical industry employees, retiring early at 55 or 60 was not associated with better survival than retiring at 65, and mortality was higher in employees who retired at 55 than in those who continued working.  (Tsai, 2005).

The Decoupling of Work & Reward

The negative impacts of separation from the workplace are partially attributable to the disruption of systems that reward productive activity. The evolved intuition that “work should be rewarded” is found in all cultures and is expressed as a moral precept in the world’s major religions. While the religious significance of hard work may be most emphasized in Protestantism, numerous cross-cultural studies have established the presence of a work ethic in the world’s major religions. Islamic teaching, for example, explicitly encourages work, self-reliance, and honorable earning.

While appetite remains constant, our capacity to deploy energy in pursuit of anticipated reward is highly variable to changes that can occur at various levels of the central nervous system. Pharmacologically induced depletion of dopamine in the Nucleus Accumbens or GABA depletion in the Ventral Tegmental area will powerfully influence effort-related decision-making. The degree to which animals engage in goal-directed behavior to obtain rewards is sharply reduced in association with the degree to which dopamine (in the Nucleus Accumbens) or GABA (in the Ventral Tegmental Area) is depleted.³

Morality, religion, ethics and ideology work at the level of the pre-frontal cortex. Ideas and moral precepts that extol the value of hard work and that exhort the individual to work confer survival value, such that we tend to experience disconnection of work and reward as emotionally and morally dissonant. Moral systems are critically important from a functional perspective because they justify engagement in productive activity that might otherwise not occur.

Such moral systems conduce not only to productivity but also promote positive mental states: there is substantial empirical evidence to support the everyday observation (clinical and otherwise) that working people are “happier” at work than when idle.⁴

Yet the potential decoupling work and reward threatens not only to disrupt psychological mechanisms that conduce to productive activity and the achievement of positive mental states: it can also be expected to undermine prosocial behavior and our capacity to cooperate. Work is a cornerstone of social control and cohesion in any society: it justifies central authority, imposes moral and behavioral norms, and facilitates peace and cooperation between individuals and large groups. Employers are organizations that respond to the human need for coherence by codifying and enacting procedures that correspond to the universal moral precept that work should be rewarded. Conversely, when employers are perceived as insufficient in this regard, deep feelings of moral indignation are typically catalyzed.

Technology & Worklessness: This Time Things are Different

“We’ve designed a system that discards us”.

                                                – Nicholas Carr ⁵

Although the effects of automation on the rate of employment emerged as a major concern of thinkers and policy makers throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries, until recently unemployment caused by technological disruption was deemed “cyclical”, an unfortunate but inevitable function of the economic cycle. Accordingly, it was believed that technology fueled gains in productivity that brought job and wage growth, and thereby “absorbed” those who lost jobs. Job losses were seen as an unfortunate but necessary evil on the path to greater productivity gains, economic growth, and the creation of other opportunities for employment.

Why might things be different now? For the first time in human history economic growth and employment are diverging  due to the rate at which both manual and “white collar” jobs are being replaced by machines and robots.⁶     While the prevailing evidence suggests that the dominant rationale for AI investment at present involves performance enhancement rather than labor substitution, Artificial Intelligence is, by definition, a type of computer science that creates systems or machines that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. Whereas automation of tasks normally performed by humans has been disrupting work and culture for decades, recent advancements demonstrate that AI can now operate within functional domains previously regarded as exclusively human. These functional domains include:

• Learning
• Pattern Recognition
• Reasoning
• Comprehending Language
• Solving Problems
• Adapting to New Situations

Uncharted Territory

“What if the cost of machines that think is

  people who don’t?”

– George Dyson

The above-referenced functional capacities have long been regarded as exclusively and quintessentially human, and the performance of tasks entailed by them is a defining feature of the human psyche. The individual who manifested excellence in any of the above-referenced functions could expect not only to survive but to prosper in the society which organized their work. The society organized around performance of the above-referenced functions would also prosper, resulting in a positive feedback loop where rewards would increasingly flow to those individuals, groups, and societies that excelled at the performance of these functions. Education is generally associated with positive impacts on human well-being (although the magnitude and direction of these effects depend on factors such as education quality, socioeconomic context, and labor market conditions.)  While a society that does not reward experience, skills, education, and training has never previously existed, our knowledge regarding the positive impacts of education on well-being (as well as our moral intuitions) suggest that few would wish to live in such a culture.

When Workers Become Irrelevant

Few technological innovators concern themselves with the psychiatric dislocations that can arise because of technological innovation. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who develop AI tend to emphasize AI’s ability to “free people up to do many other things”.  On November 22, 2025, for example, Elon Musk predicted that work would be “optional” in the next 10 to 20 years. Musk compared the choice to work to a choice to garden: just as one might choose to grow vegetables in one’s backyard even if one could go to the supermarket to procure them, some might choose to work even if they were not compelled to do so. But as Nicholas Carr trenchantly observed as early as 2014, “Being freed up sounds a lot more pleasant than being fired.” ⁷

While public discussion about the prospect of AI generated worklessness continues to be dominated by a very small number of people who own and operate corporations whose value is partially based on expectations that AI will replace human workers with computers and machines, a financial interest in eliminating human work – and the bias such interests can be expected to produce – is not necessarily the most serious limitation to their imaginings. A more profound problem resides in the fact that such prognostications tend to be entirely uninformed by the spectrum of human needs that have historically been fulfilled by work.

There are two interrelated assumptions that tend to drive the prognostications of AI developers:

• That work is a necessary evil that would, in an ideal world, best be eliminated.

• That work has only one purpose: to ensure that individual survival needs are satisfied.

The first assumption is uninformed by the enormous extent to which mental health has been contingent upon workforce participation.

The second assumption is uninformed by awareness of the numerous psychological functions (beyond mere survival) fulfilled by work.

The two false assumptions are interrelated. Worklessness probably undermines mental health because it disrupts all the critically important mental functions subserved by work (i.e., beyond the loss of income generated by workforce participation).

Because psychological needs fulfilled by work (beyond survival) are ignored, the only intervention put forth by those who advocate for unregulated AI involves the provision of economic compensation to those whose work AI has rendered obsolete. Universal Basic Income – a system whereby income is given to citizens unconditionally, regardless of whether they contribute to society – will ostensibly allow the unemployed to survive. Important questions persist relative to the impacts of such a program, but even if the implementation of such systems were to eliminate poverty and extreme need, the profound psychosocial dislocation that would be expected to result from society-wide worklessness would remain unaddressed.

Critical Mental Functions Subserved by Work

Because people require work, twentieth century philosopher Hannah Arendt wondered if technological innovation constituted a “cruel practical joke” perpetrated upon humankind. ⁸ While Arendt’s observation may seem intuitively compelling, it raises yet another question: What are the needs – beyond mere survival – that have been fulfilled by work?

Survival is the primary and most self-evident purpose of work: The reason why job loss can precipitate severe symptoms and constitute a psychiatric emergency resides in the fact that job loss is experienced as a threat to survival. It tends to elicit the same hormonal cascade that once helped early humans respond to immediate threats to their survival.   

If prolonged separation from the workplace persists after job loss, depression tends to set in.  With prolonged worklessness one loses not only one’s ability to survive, but one’s social and economic status, as well as the hope of future economic and social prosperity.

While survival is the human need initially threatened by job loss, prolonged separation from the workplace tends to disrupt fulfillment of numerous other needs that further undermine mental health. The drives and values fulfilled by work⁹   include:

• Survival
• Relatedness (the need for attachment, care, recognition, social connectedness and community)
• Pleasure (including the drive for comfort and stability)
• Knowledge (the need for information)
• Mastery (including competence, control, achievement and power)
• Play (including creativity and the drive to explore, compete, and innovate.)
• Dignity (i.e. the need for self-respect and integrity)
• Meaning, including:

a)  Significance, the subjective sense that one’s work has value, and

b) Mattering, the value of work to the world, work’s objective worthiness. ¹⁰

There are also two phenomena that conduce to optimal psychological functioning that frequently – and in some cases, exclusively – occur in the context of workforce participation:

• Structure:  the organization of time, tasks, and activities in a systematic and intentional way.

• “Flow” states:  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines “Flow” as a psychological state of optimal experience where a person is completely immersed in an activity, leading to feelings of energized focus and enjoyment. There is a loss of self-consciousness (or “ego”), focused concentration on the present (i.e., lack of worry about the past or future), and a sense of mastery over the situation with which one is confronted. 

Since Universal Basic Income addresses only one of the numerous psychological needs that have historically been fulfilled by work, it is a woefully inadequate response to the threat posed by AI induced worklessness. 

A Job System in Turmoil

The accelerating rate at which AI is developed implies that our capacity to predict and plan will continue to diminish.  While some economists continue to argue that many new jobs and industries will emerge to offset the displacement, others foresee job loss and unprecedented levels of worklessness. It seems probable that both conditions are likely to be realized:  i.e., while some new jobs will be created, the rate of job loss is also likely to increase, leading to ongoing turmoil in the job system and the economy upon which it is based.¹¹

As it becomes less possible to ensure one’s economic and social future by educating or training oneself in a specific field or skill set, the sense of security that has historically been conferred by development of  skills, training, and experience according to a well-established trajectory (e.g., apprenticeships, trade school, higher education, or professional school) can be expected to erode.

The situation is equally challenging for those who have already achieved a degree of mastery in their fields: Because adult identity has largely been defined by one’s occupation, the pervasive sense of economic insecurity precipitated by job loss is likely to be compounded by anxiety and self-questioning. Individuals who have devoted decades of their adult lives to mastering specific fields – and who have secured their desired social and economic position because of such efforts – are likely to experience a profound sense of disorientation and vulnerability. They will face a kind of existential vacuum, and many are likely to feel that they no longer “know who they are”.

Anxiety precipitated by instability and unpredictability within the Job System is likely to be experienced on a massive scale, particularly if institutions and nation states continue to fail to prepare for the turmoil created by constantly changing jobs and conditions. The problem of adjusting to the rapid and profound psychological dislocations caused by AI induced changes in the Job System will very likely manifest in an enormous increase in levels of psychiatric morbidity. Virtually all clinicians will be tasked with addressing a spectrum of psychiatric problems precipitated or intensified by the acute elimination of benefits that were historically conferred by workforce participation. 

Responding Clinically to AI Induced Job Loss: Guiding Principles

1. Focus on Addressing the Reality-Based Problem – i.e., Job Loss and Separation from the Workplace – Rather than Exclusively Focusing on Symptoms and Disorders Precipitated by the Problem.

Given the centrality of work to mental health, the absence of workforce participation will probably give rise to suffering and symptoms in most patients regardless of one’s effectiveness as a psychotherapist or psychopharmacologist.

2. Frame Responses to Separation from the Workplace by Attending to the Above-Listed Drives and Values.

While replacing the income that was formerly derived from one’s job will probably constitute the most urgent priority for most patients, once a plan is formed to stabilize the patient’s financial situation (even if temporarily), address the loss of at least some of the other benefits historically conferred by workforce participation.  The imposition of regular structure is particularly important for many individuals and can be used as a starting point in developing such a plan.  A regular schedule of activities can be created that attends to the specific psychological needs that were formerly conferred by workforce participation. While the structure ultimately imposed by the schedule should be subject to experimentation and evolve over time, a structured schedule of activities that aspires to meet at least some of the above-listed values and drives should generally be implemented for as long as the patient’s period of separation from the workplace persists.

3. Acknowledge the Limitations of Clinical Intervention.

Clinical intervention by itself cannot address the broad and profound impacts of social and economic dislocation caused by job loss and separation from the workplace. Job loss and separation from the workplace is ultimately a reality-based problem, and treatments that are based on the disease-based model of mental illness are limited in their applicability. To address the underlying problem of worklessness, Psychiatrists will need to either cultivate expertise in addressing worklessness or align with those who have such expertise. Historically, securing and maintaining employment has fallen within the domain of vocational rehabilitation counselors, recruiters, and career coaches, but new roles are likely to emerge to address the challenges posed by AI-driven job displacement.

One of the most important facts for clinicians to recall in responding to worklessness is worth reiterating: Reality-based problems require solutions that address the problematic reality, not treatment focused exclusively on addressing symptoms caused by reality.

4. Advocate Based on Awareness that the Social, Economic, and Psychiatric Consequences of AI-driven Job Loss will Ultimately Require a Society-Wide Response.

In shaping public policy and societal strategies to address AI-related work displacement, physician advocacy should be guided not only by an understanding of the profound health impacts of unemployment, but also by recognition of the need for comprehensive, society-wide solutions (see below).

5. Society-Wide Responses Should be Informed by Knowledge of History.

Although the extent of worklessness precipitated by AI may be unprecedented, history can be “mined” for clues that can be used to guide our response.

The twentieth century saw two enormous upheavals in the Job System, both of which can be used to inform our response:  First, the massive unemployment in the 1930’s, and secondly, the entry of women into the workforce on an unprecedented scale.  Both upheavals were addressed on a society-wide scale, and many of the institutions, systems, and norms that were implemented in the wake of these changes were enormously successful. Conversely, the study of history also reveals mistakes: When the capacity for self-correction is sustained, the study of how mistakes were made can be just as fruitful than the study of our successes.

In response to the massive unemployment of the 1930’s, the most successful work projects in American history were launched. The principles that guided such projects were relatively simple yet demonstrably effective, and can be readily applied in the setting of future worklessness epidemics ¹²:

1) The prevention of poverty is as important as its amelioration, but the security of a job paying a living wage is more important than either.

2)  Work should be organized to serve an enduring and socially useful purpose.

3)  Work projects must be self-policing to prevent fraud, malfeasance, and corruption.

4) Criticism – generally in the form of ideologically-driven attacks from both extremes of the “left-right” political continuum – must be anticipated and proactively militated against. Even when such efforts are undertaken, ideologically driven hostility and criticism will persist, regardless of the projects’ success.

As Yuval Harari has observed, the second successful transformations of the Job System of the 20^th century “resulted not from technological invention but from unleashing the untapped potential of half the human species. Bringing women into the job system didn’t require technological wizardry but rather letting go of some outdated myths.”  ¹³   In other words, some enormous problems can be solved not by thinking technologically but by thinking more accurately about the situation within which we find ourselves.

6. Cultivate the Capacity to Start Something New.

Creativity is antithetical to ideology. Whereas ideology entails repeated application of fixed ideas to every situation regardless of their relevance, DW Winnicott observed that creativity is “something that is present when anyone…looks at a healthy way at anything or does anything deliberately…”  The capacity of our species to self-correct, i.e., to identify and correct habitual (but faulty) ways of thinking about work will be critically important.

Creativity also refers to the capacity to start something new. Whereas Labor and Work are driven by necessity, there is a third form of productive activity entailed by the human capacity to start something new: Action. If AI does contribute to the cancellation of the need for human work, Action may define the form of activity that replaces work. Action arises from the human capacity for freedom and is defined as freely pursued productive activity that is not driven by necessity. ¹⁴

Although unprecedented levels of worklessness – if unaddressed – are likely to profoundly undermine health and well-being on a massive scale, such a scenario does not imply that our habitual way of thinking about, organizing, and implementing structures that facilitate and reward goal-directed activity are not in dire need of correction. Many of the problems to which work has historically given rise can be traced back to our reaction to the fact that work forces itself upon us. Action, in contrast, is not coercive. If humans are no longer compelled to perform productive activity, the following question arises and can be used frame our response to the prospect of cancellation of the need for human work:

How should productive activity best be organized to:

• engage mental functions and
• fulfill drives and values

historically associated with work?

7. Creating a Future for Work Necessitates Remembering Why Work Originated.

While the critically important functions fulfilled by workforce participation have been emphasized – as well as the devastating impacts that occur when such participation is disrupted – it is at least as important to recognize profound and pervasive problems that ensue from the way in which work is presently organized. Our Job System’s most critically important problem may reside in the following irony: while the capacity for work evolved to meet individual and collective survival needs, much of today’s workforce is engaged in activity irrelevant or downright antithetical to the survival, health and flourishing of future generations.  In this respect our current Job System produces outcomes fundamentally opposed to the purposes for which the human capacity for work evolved. 

The human capacity to work evolved in response to threats to survival.  Yet the atmosphere of superabundance anticipated from the development of AI is also expected to generate threats, though of a fundamentally different kind than those to which our ancestors responded. Unlike traditional existential threats, which arise from environments inhospitable to human needs, these new threats stem not from scarcity but from the consequences of our own behavior. If homo sapiens is to survive, the systems and processes that currently govern work must accordingly be replaced by productive activity organized to address the destructive effects of work that has already been performed, work that has in many cases become disconnected from the individual and group survival needs that the capacity to work evolved to satisfy.

Notes:

1.  Brown, Andrew. “On the Value of Work”.  In Psychiatry of Workplace Dysfunction. Oxford University Press. 2018.

2. Couser, Greg; Morrisson, David; Brown, Andrew, and Agarwal, Gaurava. “Is Separation from the Workplace a Psychiatric Emergency? The Role of the Clinician and the Consultant”. Psychiatric Annals, 2021;51(2):58–63.

3. Salamone, JD, et al. “Effort-Related Functions of Nucleus Accumbens Dopamine and Associated Forebrain Circuits”. Psychopharmacology (2007) 191:661-482. See also Floresco, S. et al, “Mesocortical Dopamine Modulation of Executive Functions: Beyond Working Memory”, Psychopharmacology (2006) 188:567-585.

4. Csikszentmihaly, Mihaly.  Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. 2008.

5. Carr, Nicholas. The Glass Cage: Automation and Us. Norton. 2014.

6. Mcaffee, Andrew and Brynjofsson, Erik.  The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. Norton. 2014.

7. Carr, Nicholas. The Glass Cage: Automation and Us. Norton. 2014

8. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. The University of Chicago Press. 1958.

9. Maccoby, Michael.  Why Work? Touchstone. 1988.

10. Brown, Andrew. “Meaning and Why it Matters”.  See: https://workosophy.org/2020/06/27/imagining-sisyphus-fulfilled-meaning-why-it-matters/

11. Occhipinti, Jo-An, et al. “Generative AI May Create a Socioeconomic Tipping Point Through Labour Displacement.”  Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 18;15(1):26050.

12. Brown, Andrew. “The WPA as Working Model: Guiding Principles & Key Projects”. See:  https://workosophy.org/2020/11/06/the-wpa-as-working-model-guiding-principles-key-projects/

13. Harari, Yuval Noah. Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Random House. 2024.

14. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. The University of Chicago Press. 1958.