Andrew Yang claims AI will cause 'jobpocalypse' among white collar workers within the next 18 months

[dalton99a]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-presidential-candidate-claims-ai-160740988.html

Former presidential candidate claims AI will cause ‘jobpocalypse’ among white collar workers within the next 18 months
Isabel Keane
Thu, February 26, 2026 at 10:07 AM CST

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang has issued a desperate warning that artificial intelligence may cause a “jobpocalypse” that would leave white-collar workers without jobs within the next 18 months.

Yang, who competed in the 2020 Democratic primary, has become the latest public figure to question how the current AI boom may impact the employment of millions of Americans.

“I believe that millions of white-collar workers are going to lose their jobs in the next 12 to 18 months due to AI,” Yang said in a video shared to Instagram Saturday.

“AI is now able to do the work of a very, very smart human in minutes or even seconds. This is going to displace marketers, coders, designers, lawyers, accountants, call center workers — you name it,” he continued.

Yang warned that, as a result, there would be an extreme “winner-take-all” economy, in which only the wealthiest people, or the top 20 percent, would be able to thrive.


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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/technology/block-square-job-cuts-ai.html

Block Cuts 40% of Its Work Force Because of Its Embrace of A.I.
About 4,000 workers will lose their jobs as the payments company does more work with new artificial intelligence tools, its top executive said.
By Natallie Rocha
Feb. 26, 2026 Updated 8:08 p.m. ET

Block, the financial technology company that owns Square, Cash App and Tidal, said on Thursday that it was cutting 40 percent of its work force as it embraced new artificial intelligence tools.

About 4,000 employees are expected to lose their jobs, Jack Dorsey, the company’s top executive, said in a social media post.

The cuts, made as Block reported strong financial results for its most recent quarter, are perhaps the most striking example so far of a technology company’s making plans to eliminate employees because of A.I.

“Something has changed,” [Dorsey] wrote. “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that’s accelerating rapidly.”

Whether computer programmers — and white-collar workers in general — will be replaced by A.I. is an increasingly urgent question being asked in Silicon Valley and by politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont.

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[SWBTATTReg]

1. IMHO, no it won't. It's too early in the product cycle to really have that kind of impact on things. New tech takes

time, lots of time to get embedded into infrastructure, and start impacting it negatively.

[Tim S]

5. Infrastructure? It's all cloud "data lakes" and services now

I retired last fall after a 40 year career in IT (the last 20 as a Cybersecurity Engineer for a government agency). I watched in horror over the last 10 years as tax payer data was moved from “on-premises” secure physical servers that we could touch and defend to one of the 3 major cloud providers (with no provision to revert). Programmers learned to use cloud-based development tools, virtual machines that get automatically added or destroyed as workloads change and use cloud-based services (zero servers to manage). Traditional IT operations moved to the cloud and there’s virtually no more capital expense— it’s all a monthly bill based on usage (just like your power bill). Worst of all, all of these development & management tools are cloud-specific, so there’s.no way to pick up & move to a cheaper cloud provider when the monthly bills get too high — True vendor lock-in.

I say all of this to point out there is very little “infrastructure” left. Dramatic, sweeping change take place quickly — AI just accelerates it even faster. So, do *I* think there’s going to be a massive collapse of white collar jobs due to AI? I don’t know, but I certainly think it is possible. I just thank my lucky stars I managed to retire with a pension before any collapse could happen. But I do worry about the fate of my former co-workers.

[Ferrets are Cool]

7. I beg to disagree. Most experts in the field are agreeing on this 18 month period.

And no, I will not suppy links. So take it as you will.

[Blue Full Moon]

20. Not really. It's more advanced than you think.

There is a technology gap. Take the iPad for example. FEMA was using them with Star Link about 10 years before they were available for consumers. They didn't have the Apple Logo on them.

[Greg_In_SF]

2. No

it's not

[Ferrets are Cool]

9. Tell that to the 4000 that were just terminated from Block.

[hunter]

18. Next up, the termination of Block itself.

Along with everyone else heavily invested in AI.

This is going to be a wild ride.

A 1929 crash? Maybe.

If so the root cause of the crash won't be AI taking over jobs, it will be the reality that AI is not the "intelligence" it's being sold as.

[LearnedHand]

3. I know he's kind of a kook but he's not the only one saying this

But for a certain sector only: Coding. The alarm bells are going off in most of the tech publications I read. What’s happening is in the vibe coding world, where developers use AI to write code they used to do from inside their brain. Of course the greedy corporations want to cut out the human in vibe coding.

Note: I saw a demo of vibe coding using Microsoft AI integrated with Visual Studio. It blew me away, not because the AI could take the human’s job but for how much more power it put in the developer’s hands.

[DBoon]

4. Your 15 minutes were up long ago. Andrew

[SocialDemocrat61]

6. How's Yang's third party going?

[haele]

8. Not a new prediction, this has been a 30 year trainwreck in progress...So, what is his solution?

I remember he was a starry eyed pro-tech rich guy just a couple years ago.
He just realized how stupidly greedy and selfish and unsustainable a cyber dystopia becomes?
AI and robotics are not at the point that a small group of wealthy tech bros and their harems can live in comfortable luxury without worrying about societal collapse that will take them with it.
And the first people that get eaten when it all goes cannibal are the Rich, because there aren't enough of them around to protect themselves -especially from their own mercenaries and servants - once money is useless.

[highplainsdem]

19. Sam Altman was profiled by the New Yorker 10 years ago, and besides revealing that he's a prepper,

he brought up how many people he'd decided he'd be willing to kill to protect his loved ones.

100,000 people.

Made me wonder what he's making plans for.

See reply 6 here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217685127

[Zorro]

10. AI will eliminate white collar jobs. Automation/robotics will eliminate blue collar jobs.

Government is not preparing for a future with many more millions of unemployed, including well-armed 2A zealots.

I fear we may be entering an age of economic serfdom.

[Dave says]

15. "Eliminate" in 18 months is too strong a word

Yes, most of IT is doomed, but it will take longer for AI to clear out the marketing department, legal, our doctors (will not happen), and so on. It would be very optimistic to say 3-5 years, more like a decade before AI has run its course and displaced millions.

What to tell our children? What to study? How to earn a living? My p(doom) runs about 50%.

[2naSalit]

11. Yeah...

And can AI grow tomatoes?

If everyone loses their jobs, where's the food going to come from, AI is not going to produce food or shelter for that matter. So how is that all supposed to work? If they plan to get rid of all the useless people, there's nine billion of us so...



Just asking.

[Dave says]

16. Robotics will ride in with the AI race horse

[gulliver]

12. Blue collar and retirees aren't safe either

The people who lose white collar jobs will compete for blue collar jobs. Retirees who depend on Social Security or any sort of pension that has pay-as-you go funding will see support evaporate if young workers can't find income.

We're just handling this AI emergence fairly pathetically so far, imo. It's not even being talked about. You can't call Yang's and Bernie's warnings anywhere close to sufficient.

I think you have to tax automation. Not just AI. Automation, including AI. As AI replaces people's work, AI needs to be taxed to fund people's time off. We should be looking at 30 hour work weeks and getting rid of the two-income trap.

[EdmondDantes_]

13. What's automation in that context?

Sewing machines? Tractors? Cars? Computers?

I don't mean to sound flippant, but you'd have to define automation pretty specifically or toss a whole lot out the window. Because automation is the efficiency with which our society is based and trying to tax that out would also have major consequences.

[gulliver]

17. It needs to be defined in law and regulation

I don't have the answer to how such a set of taxes would be designed. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for the answer. The discussions I see so far indicate that a whole lot of people just think we're forced to sit by and watch a "tidal wave" overtake us (if that's what it ends up being).

No, we can start right away. Mark Kelly, for one has a good white paper.

Start with the principle that AI's material abundance-generating ability needs to benefit all people. The solution should be a normal American solution, some mix of capitalism and socialism. Government leaders should be monitoring the advances closely.

I'm an AI optimist and staunch American-style capitalist. I actually think it's fairly obviously in the best interest of the billionaire titans running this show to make it work for all. And I really do think that's what they intend to do. But it doesn't hurt for democracy to have a say in it the whole time too.

On edit: And it's not that I'm unaware that AI could be the end of us too. The situation is moving too fast. We can already see that the government is a major customer of AI, so there's obviously a lot of engagement. It's not like no one's driving at all. So I'm optimistic, but cautiously optimistic.

My two cents!

[highplainsdem]

14. AI actually does a terribe job, making lots of errors that the reduced human staff has to catch, leading

to burnout.

But the AI-addled CEOs are so thrilled by the prospect of getting rid of most of their human workers that they don't care.

I hope they all fail catastrophically...but the CEOs will still try to blame human workers.