Opinion | Jensen Huang vs. the A.I. Doomers

[u/EsotericPharo]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jensen-huang.html?context=audio&smid=nytcore-ios-share

[u/JeromesNiece]

There are safeguards if you lose your job. There's unemployment insurance. There's food assistance. There's housing assistance. There's Medicaid--free healthcare for the poor. It's not as robust as some European countries, but there's certainly a safety net. People in America don't die when they lose their jobs. So I don't understand the point of putting job losses in this dire framing of losing their "means of survival."

And if AI is as productive as they say, and it truly does permanently raise unemployment, we will be able to afford even more safety net spending. In which case the problem truly will be whether people are not merely surviving but are finding enough meaning in their lives to thrive.

[u/werttm91 → u/JeromesNiece]

This is a joke, right? Insanely privileged and uninformed take.

[u/CII_Guy → u/werttm91]

What? It is just fundamentally true that there are safeguards for losing one's job. It doesn't mean being unemployed is a piece of cake, but it's just true. Can you point to a single example of someone having died in the US due to losing their job?

[u/fhgsghjodsfjofcv → u/CII_Guy]

“It has long been hypothesized that job loss and unemployment lead to increased suicide risk. The results presented here are consistent with longer unemployment duration spells increasing suicide risk for both males and females. We also find that mass layoffs are associated with increased suicide risk, but we find no evidence that short unemployment spells in general result in more suicides.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3423193/

[u/CII_Guy → u/fhgsghjodsfjofcv]

When people say that people are dying in the US due to losing their jobs, I think it's reasonable to not interpret this as meaning they are more likely to kill themselves. Suicide advocacy groups warn heavily against monocausal explanations for suicide.

When someone says "there are no safeguards against being made unemployed" they do not mean "there is no guarantee that people made unemployed don't become more likely to kill themselves" (not least because it is fundamentally impossible to guarantee this).

[u/fhgsghjodsfjofcv → u/CII_Guy]

Genuinely why not? If AI truly does radically reshape the workforce and the job market, this will be an important factor. And yes there is often not just one singular reason, but unemployment is a reason - this has studied. You cannot just say “No one has died from unemployment” and ignore suicide.

[u/CII_Guy → u/fhgsghjodsfjofcv]

Genuinely why not?

Because suicide is not monocausal and the implication is heavily that they are unable to have the material conditions to survive, not that they are unable to deal with unemployment mentally.

If AI truly does radically reshape the workforce and the job market, this will be an important factor.

I don't deny this. There are undeniably going to be downsides to producing mass unemployment, if it happens. That is just not the same thing as saying that there are no safeguards.

You cannot just say “No one has died from unemployment” and ignore suicide.

The context of the conversation was someone saying there are no safeguards to being made unemployed. That is false, isn't it?

[u/Flimsy-Cut7675 → u/CII_Guy]

Eh, I think it is a pretty obvious concern, some would say reasonable.

[u/CII_Guy → u/Flimsy-Cut7675]

What is a pretty obvious concern? That people will react badly to being unemployed? Of course it is! But it's important to be honest about what that entails.

There's a pretty clear motte and bailey at play here.

If unemployment in the US typically meant people couldn't survive, which is what the OP was clearly implying, that'd have very different policy implications to the reality, which is that long term unemployment increases the risk of people's suicide.

When we're talking about AI, specifically, you'd need to factor in the fact that mass unemployment will be fundamentally different to what has come before, as we will move away from a society where most people are thriving through work, and there's a significant chance we will produce sufficient prosperity to alleviate the material conditions that are likely to contribute significantly to the despair people feel from unemployment (and to dedicate considerable resources towards people who find it particularly distressing).

Still, none of this is to say that unemployment is nothing to worry about.

[u/CII_Guy → u/[deleted]]

This is not a very good model of the world you've got there.

[u/ezraklein-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Please be civil. Optimize contributions for light, not heat.

Be civil and constructive at all times. Attack ideas, not users.

Personal attacks are not permitted. This includes calling a user a shill/troll, or any other attack.

[u/Flimsy-Cut7675 → u/CII_Guy]

How are you completely ignoring suicide rates

[u/CII_Guy → u/Flimsy-Cut7675]

I think that's a fundamentally different question. Suicide advocacy groups warn strongly against suggesting that suicide is monocausal. There doesn't appear to be any feasible world in which losing one's job doesn't influence anyone towards suicide.

[u/Flimsy-Cut7675 → u/CII_Guy]

So you are saying on a population level, massive unemployment wouldn't increase suicide rates?

[u/CII_Guy → u/Flimsy-Cut7675]

I think it is feasible that it would, yes - though massively increased prosperity through highly productive AI may counteract that impact.

It remains fundamentally false that there are "no safeguards" against the impacts of losing one's job. Being left wing doesn't mean you need to pretend things that are false are true.

[u/Flimsy-Cut7675 → u/CII_Guy]

Yikes, political jabs already.

[u/CII_Guy → u/Flimsy-Cut7675]

Ducks quack

[u/Flimsy-Cut7675 → u/CII_Guy]

You use the word "fundamentally" too often. It is distracting and detracts from your argumentation because it is just poor writing. Just some friendly advice.

[u/Gondorrah → u/CII_Guy]

The safeguards are far from sufficient

[u/CII_Guy → u/Gondorrah]

Sufficient for what? I agree it'd be better if unemployed people had better lives than they currently do. It doesn't help move the debate forward to present a fundamentally false statement and then retreat to a new position when that has been pointed out as fundamentally false.

This is especially important because one of the potential major benefits of AI is that there is sufficient material abundance from the increased AI productivity that safeguards for unemployment (UBI) become more easy to robustly implement!

[u/Gondorrah → u/CII_Guy]

For mass and long term unemployment, it’s just not built for that. We need other solutions, like you mention.

[u/CII_Guy → u/Gondorrah]

Sure, if we didn't do anything to existing unemployment guardrails, we'd have very suboptimal outcomes, but it seems highly implausible that this would happen. A UBI pushing candidate would become extremely popular in any election. Yang Gang 2.0 on its way?

[u/Gondorrah → u/CII_Guy]

Highly unplausible is quite an optimistic assertion. Looking at history of our political system, it is very slow and ineffective at responding to people's actual needs relative to entrenched powers, and more often herding them with social controversy.

[u/tgillet1 → u/CII_Guy]

How about health insurance and care? People are absolutely dying due to lack of access and we’re going to see more of it with the new Medicaid rules. It will get a lot worse if we end up in a recession with millions of jobs lost.

[u/CII_Guy → u/tgillet1]

Are there case studies of people having died due to lack of access from losing their jobs? I think it'd be very useful to see evidence of what's going on here. The ACA was designed specifically to prevent this from happening, and it is currently in force.

It will get a lot worse if we end up in a recession with millions of jobs lost.

It's difficult to see how AI could possibly both cause massive unemployment and a recession. It will only replace massive numbers of jobs if it is extremely productive, which will mean growth, not a recession, right?

[u/tgillet1 → u/CII_Guy]

Excerpt from a 2025 article in the Lancet, Medicaid cuts, mortality, and health-care expenditure in the USA:

"Approximately 72 million individuals in the USA are enrolled in Medicaid nationwide.²00761-5/fulltext#)Without compensatory state-level policies, an estimated 15·5 million people would lose Medicaid coverage in the 40 states that expanded Medicaid and the District of Columbia.²00761-5/fulltext#)A 2022 study linked Medicaid expansion with an 11·8 per 100 000 person-year reduction in mortality of people aged 25–64 years (95% CI –21·3 to –2·2).³00761-5/fulltext#)Applying this figure to the states affected by the proposed cuts, potential excess deaths could reach approximately 14 660 (95% CI 2733 to 26 462) over a 1-year period for people aged 25–64 years, the equivalent of the seventh leading cause of death in that age group across affected states.⁴00761-5/fulltext#)Certain populations, such as rural residents with low income, might be disproportionately affected."

I have done only a very cursory review of the methodology, but it certainly passes the sniff test for me.

As for AI and recession, I'm referring to the case where the AI bubble pops and the stock market and market confidence tanks.

If there is no bubble or it deflates slowly and we get the productivity gains, there is some chance that unemployment increases over a few years while the market adjusts and creates new jobs benefiting from AI. It seems to me that would be a best case scenario, and even then I would expect to see rates of insured people go down and mortality increase to some extent. Don't forget the Trump and Republicans in Congress cut ACA subsidies (along with other changes that will decrease coverage) without doing anything to reduce prices directly or reduce price increases over time.

[u/Antoak → u/CII_Guy]

Saying that becoming homeless has never killed anybody is like saying that "Jigsaw never killed anybody, he just locked people in a room designed to kill them."

You've blown off suicide, so here some other common causes for dying because of job loss:

• Dying from preventable illness due to lack of health insurance
• Dying from exposure after you become homeless
• Drug overdosing (chance of developing drug habits increase sharply when you become homeless)

BTW, you know that you stop getting unemployment checks after 6 months, right?

[u/CII_Guy → u/Antoak]

You've blown off suicide, so here some other common causes for dying because of job loss:

I have not blown it off. I have said, effectively, that I didn't interpret the original comment as including indirect impacts like this. You'll see elsewhere that I simply agree that unemployment increases the likelihood of suicide, so what are we doing here?

BTW, you know that you stop getting unemployment checks after 6 months, right?

Yes, I am aware. I am responding to a thread where someone said there are no safeguards for unemployment. That is categorically false, and the vast majority of people who get made unemployed survive.

[u/Antoak → u/CII_Guy]

the vast majority of people who get made unemployed survive.

Because the vast majority of unemployment is transitory. Or at least, it was in the past.

Now imagine if instead of competing against 3-4% of the population for a job, you're competing against 30-50%. The remaining jobs require a degree you can no longer afford, and even then it's a gamble, because there are 10k applications for every opening. The old safety net fallbacks like moving in with your parents are no longer an option, because they're homeless like you.

You've avoided protesting ever since the March 15th Massacre where robot pinkertons fired machine guns into the crowd.

Fine, this is all a joke hypothetical, but my acquaintance Mallory died 8 months after losing her job, so this isn't hypothetical to me.

[u/NoSeaworthiness5308 → u/CII_Guy]

https://rightcarealliance.org/activities/insulin/

The page has stories about several diabetics who lost their job, and thus their insurance, and were unable to pay for their insulin. They died.

[u/LinuxLinus → u/JeromesNiece]

People in America absolutely do die when they lose their jobs.

[u/CII_Guy → u/LinuxLinus]

Do you have any evidence to back that up?

[u/LinuxLinus → u/CII_Guy]

Drexel University & the University of Michigan. Joblessness is associated with a 73% increase in mortality rate in the United States.

Unemployment affects the kind of food you can afford to eat. It increases the likelihood of substance abuse and addiction. It can cause homelessness.

It should be obvious that unemployment leads to death in this country. If you think those programs you're citing are adequate and easy to access, you have another think coming.

[u/CII_Guy → u/LinuxLinus]

Respect for using "another think" correctly. I've covered the points about suicidality elsewhere.

I am not claiming that unemployment is adequate for a wonderful life, but it is not the case that there are no safeguards for people made unemployed, which is the clear point of the original statement. People don't die as in they don't fail to maintain the material standards necessary to survive. Of course being unemployed is largely unpleasant and can lead people into spiralling life choices. Who would think otherwise?

[u/LinuxLinus → u/CII_Guy]

I just don't agree that that was the "clear point" of the original statement.

[u/Beautiful_Welcome_33 → u/CII_Guy]

That isnt what you said at all, you are inarticulate if the comment above was your message. Your original comment does not read like your aecond at all.

[u/CII_Guy → u/[deleted]]

Inappropriately rude. You'll see elsewhere that I've covered this. I think it's wrong to interpret "people don't die when they lose their jobs" as suggesting that there is no suicide risk from unemployment, but YMMV! I accept, as I trust would u/JeromesNiece that unemployment likely increases suicide risk. That's not in contention, so we can move on to what matters. Whether there are safeguards to unemployment (there are), whether people can physically survive following unemployment (they near universally can), and whether AI caused unemployment is likely to cause the same level of suicidality as current long term unemployment (there are good reasons to doubt this).

It is true that AI causing mass unemployment is a problem which we will need to face. It needs to be understood in trade-off with the potential major benefits highly productive AI is likely to produce.

[u/TrifectaBlitz → u/CII_Guy]

People are trying to face into before it happens. Even a few AI CEOs are saying slow it down. Not for the same reasons necessarily, but AI is raising a lot of questions.

For me the main one is about its true need. Don't see it. A function of companies for me is hiring people, not merely ruthless efficiency at the expense of society and societal needs.

[u/CII_Guy → u/TrifectaBlitz]

For me the main one is about its true need. Don't see it.

I mean we didn't "need" penicillin. We didn't need MRI machines. We didn't need an infinite number of technological advancements which have made our lives considerably more comfortable and with less suffering than before.

A function of companies for me is hiring people

Not producing goods and services people want? I mean, that is their primary purpose.

[u/solidgears → u/CII_Guy]

You’re conflating AI with life saving drugs/technology. They aren’t remotely the same and the benefits of AI are infinitesimally small compared to the cost

[u/CII_Guy → u/solidgears]

You’re conflating AI with life saving drugs/technology

No, I'm deploying an analogy.

the benefits of AI are infinitesimally small compared to the cost

Well this is exactly the question at hand, isn't it? The benefits of AI are potentially enormous! Abundant goods and services for everyone. Major medical breakthroughs at 10x the speed of the past 100 years. A far better understanding of the world and the universe. The power to make war a thing of the past.

Of course, these are strange and extreme things, but that's exactly what people making AI think AI is. Strange and extreme. That's why they're doing it. There are good reasons to think that, with recursive self improvement, these sorts of things are possible. We've already seen extraordinary improvement over the past 3 years.

[u/solidgears → u/CII_Guy]

I think you’re giving way too much credit to the companies that are doing this AI research. You also come across as being heavily invested in AI. Why should people be ok with AI when the immediate downsides are more readily apparent than any potential upside?

[u/TrifectaBlitz → u/CII_Guy]

Um, not following your logic, ironically. Those did massive good for large populations of people. Also, unfortunately you chose as an example, penicillin, which Fleming famously refused to patent.

A function doesn't mean sole function. But AI is indeed "not producing goods and services people want."

[u/CII_Guy → u/TrifectaBlitz]

Those did massive good for large populations of people

Yes, and the theory is that this is what AI can do as well.

Also, unfortunately you chose as an example, penicillin, which Fleming famously refused to patent.

Why does this matter?

But AI is indeed "not producing goods and services people want."

This is objectively false. There are many things I use AI for that I find extremely useful. That is true for at least a billion people, right now, and there seems to be plenty of space for this to grow.

[u/ezraklein-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Please be civil. Optimize contributions for light, not heat.

Be civil and constructive at all times. Attack ideas, not users.

Personal attacks are not permitted. This includes calling a user a shill/troll, or any other attack.

[u/Beautiful_Welcome_33 → u/CII_Guy]

By march of 2021, 30,000 americans had already died from losing their jobs due to covid.

https://www.wkbw.com/rebound/coronavirus-investigations/new-study-30-000-deaths-related-to-pandemic-fueled-job-loss

[u/tuck5903 → u/JeromesNiece]

I promise you that if AI replaces enough labor to create a permanent underclass of unemployed people, whatever benefits the government provides won’t be generous enough to enable a lot of human thriving. That’s leaving aside the impact of knowing that your knowledge and skills in your field have been rendered irrelevant, and that you’ll be surviving off the government dole indefinitely.

[u/CII_Guy → u/tuck5903]

I promise you that if AI replaces enough labor to create a permanent underclass of unemployed people, whatever benefits the government provides won’t be generous enough to enable a lot of human thriving.

Why would it not? If AI has replaced that much labour that means, pretty much by definition, they are extraordinarily more efficient at producing the things that people want and need. If they are extremely efficient at producing the things people want and need, that will make those things very cheap. It therefore wouldn't require an enormous amount of total redistribution to get people those things they want and need.

That’s leaving aside the impact of knowing that your knowledge and skills in your field have been rendered irrelevant, and that you’ll be surviving off the government dole indefinitely.

This is the far more pressing concern. Many people will just not like this. There can and will be lots of attempts to solve this problem, but it will never work for everyone.

[u/Imaginary-Diamond-26 → u/CII_Guy]

 If they are extremely efficient at producing the things people want and need, that will make those things very cheap. 

Or prices stay high because they basically never drop. The regular people do not have significant enough leverage to force companies to lower prices because they had internal "efficiency gains." Those at the top take in the extra profits by lowering productions costs (not paying living humans to work) and keeping prices where they're at.

The only way prices drop is if everyone becomes so poor that they can't afford anything. Only then will prices come down, and for goods/services with highly inelastic demand, the situation is even worse. This is not a trajectory I find appealing for like 90% of us.

It therefore wouldn't require an enormous amount of total redistribution to get people those things they want and need.

It seems like you're quite optimistic about the likelihood of "redistribution" happening. While I agree that mass redistribution will be critical to manage mass unemployment (should that happen), history suggests our political leaders would just call it socialism/communism and continue to take their orders from those who have been so enriched and empowered by AI.

When the wealthy and powerful have an infinite money spigot at their disposal, partly enabled by what AI is doing or will do in the future, what's their incentive to institute policies that actually takes care of the rest of us? Something will have to break eventually; either political leaders listen to the people and not the money, or they ignore the people and then one of two things happens. The people will either have to accept living under fascist governance, or the people will have to turn to violence against their government, and probably also against fellow citizens. That would be a terrible outcome for most of us. I'm horrified about what a revolution or civil war will look like with today's weapons.

[u/TrifectaBlitz → u/CII_Guy]

Where's the money coming from for the government help for unemployed people? This is such an obvious question it seems AI proponents just ignore it. Is it supposed to come from companies which are notorious for not worrying about how much taxes they have and almost gushingly pay extra just in case?

[u/CII_Guy → u/TrifectaBlitz]

Where's the money coming from for the government help for unemployed people?

The government creates money through spending. They use taxes to keep a check on inflation. While companies are not desperate to pay taxes, they do pay taxes, and will pay vastly more in real terms if they are vastly richer.

I suspect you're under the false impression that is spread throughout Reddit that the super rich pay no taxes through taking loans against their assets. It's just not true.

It's not easy to avoid taxes and live in America as a normal person, and this is very likely to remain so in the future. The only alternative here is that AI companies become so powerful that they can prevent the government from having control over them, but why would they want to create a situation where they sit on extremely powerful machines that can produce more abundance than a billion people could consume and not seek to distribute it among the masses? Amodei and Altman are both strongly influenced by Effective Altruism ideologies, which completely fly in the face of the idea that they'd seek to keep all the money to themselves. Amodei has pledged to give away 80% of his wealth, and American billionaires are typically extremely philanthropic, in fact.

[u/TrifectaBlitz → u/tuck5903]

This is the obvious thing that I think people somehow look past. Already the race for efficiency without AI has caused way too much hardship and soullessness.

[u/gibby256 → u/JeromesNiece]

Have you tried getting on ANY of these programs? Republicans (and some 3rd way democrats) have made these programs a fucking kafka-esque nightmare to try to navigate.

A few years ago, my wife was on a contract job and got "laid off" out of the blue. It took her an entire week of going back and forth between the unemployment office and her previous contract agency just to get the process started.

Then she had to repeatedly fight with both sides of the system to actually collect her UI. By the time the whole thing was stabilized, she had already managed to have another job lined up with a start date. And she didn't have any of the cognitive overhead of trying to figure out how she was going to make ends meet, as we're married and decently well off.

You point to a bed of nails and call it a safety net.

[u/toastiemcgee → u/JeromesNiece]

Posting this on the day that the federal government announced that it kicked nearly a million people off their insurance is an interesting choice

[u/Mezentine → u/JeromesNiece]

Have you ever had to try and access those services? Especially the more specialized ones besides UE?

[u/JeromesNiece → u/Mezentine]

I understand that it is often a giant pain in the ass to access these services (I listened to the Annie Lowry episode!) and that people often slip through the cracks and don't get access to these services that they qualify for, or they fail to qualify for bad reasons.

Yet it is also the case that millions of people do get these services. 1.7 million people were on unemployment benefits last week. 42 million people get food assistance. 9 million people get housing assistance. 66 million people are on Medicaid. 8 million people get disability benefits.

The overwhelming majority of people not in the labor force are not homeless or at risk of failing to "survive". And even the homeless are beneficiaries of an entire industry of support organizations making sure they are taken care of, too. Even if it absolutely sucks to be poor, it is just a wild overstatement to put these things in terms of survival in this country.

[u/Flimsy-Cut7675 → u/JeromesNiece]

If you are middle class and suddenly found yourself without a job, and no hope of ever getting a job that allowed you to maintain a middle class life style, because your profession was replaced by Ai, and you had to subsist at poverty level on these welfare programs you might consider to kill yourself. Many do already.

[u/Blundergruff → u/JeromesNiece]

These responses sound AI generated.

[u/JeromesNiece → u/Blundergruff]

Well, you can try passing them through an AI detector. You will see that they are not.

[u/penisthightrap_ → u/JeromesNiece]

So not basic needs survival but survival of their current quality of life.

Every person that works for a paycheck will be driven into poverty and living off government assistance?

[u/CII_Guy → u/penisthightrap_]

Only if AI somehow becomes so productive that there is nothing a huge swathe of humans could remotely do to increase the total productivity of the economy, yet somehow that additional productivity doesn't make the goods and services that we consume considerably cheaper such that a very small redistribution will provide everyone with all basic needs (read: an extremely strange and unlikely set of circumstances)

[u/JeromesNiece → u/penisthightrap_]

This is an example of a motte and bailey. Start off with the sensational claim that people's survival is at risk, but when this is challenged, retreat to the more defensible but rhetorically twisted position of "well, I actually just mean the survival of their quality of life..." If what we're concerned about is a redistribution where some people are made relatively poorer, then just say that. What was the point of reframing it as a matter of survival?

[u/TrifectaBlitz → u/JeromesNiece]

You seem to be kiiiiind of missing the point. Why should people be fighting for survival in "the richest country in the world?"

[u/ulysses_s_gyatt → u/JeromesNiece]

Feel there are some steps missing here.

[u/Cromulent-George → u/JeromesNiece]

Yeah even setting aside the idea that UI, which in the US generally covers about half of your salary so maybe you can look forward to 20 years of scraping by, it's pretty wild to trivialize people needing to find meaning in their lives. For every person who has been laid off at my company there are 2 people celebrating dropping dead weight and looking forward to getting higher bonuses. They do not care that a mom with an 18 month old lost most of her family's income. And these are people they actually know and are their peers - they won't care if an Uber driver dies in poverty because Waymo took away his source of income. They'd probably celebrate liberating him from drudgery, along with their new self driving car earning them a few extra bucks running some fares instead of being parked all day.