California governor orders a plan to cope with AI job upheaval
By AFP
May 21, 2026
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to be a Democratic Party candidate for president in 2028, has ordered agencies to start working on a plan to deal with the job-killing effects of AI - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday ordered officials to start work on a plan to mitigate the job-destroying impact of artificial intelligence, the first US state to do so.
Newsom’s demand comes as fears grow worldwide that AI could render everyone from truck drivers to lawyers unemployed as machines learn to perform tasks that have previously required a human.
The executive order will mobilize state agencies, experts, universities and industry leaders to develop policies around severance standards, employment insurance, worker training and better tracking of hiring and layoffs in an effort to avoid nasty surprises and sudden workforce cuts.
“Businesses are going to make a fortune, and that’s why you cannot continue to have a payroll tax system that taxes jobs and then subsidizes automation,” the governor said in a statement.
Newsom — who is widely expected to be a leading Democratic Party candidate in the 2028 presidential election — said lightning fast developments in AI meant the entire employment system needed to be reimagined.
“California has never sat back and watched as the future happened to us –- and we won’t start now,” he said.
The move comes as figures revealed the US technology sector — which is headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley — slashed more than 52,000 jobs in the first three months of the year, according to the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
On Wednesday, Facebook parent Meta began laying off 8,000 people — around 10 percent of its workforce.
Advances in AI, which have allowed for the automation of increasingly complex tasks, are often cited by companies as the reason for reducing headcounts.
But some industry watchers say firms are using the technology as a pretext for other cost-cutting.
Changes in how we work are reverberating around the world, sparking debate from Asia to Europe to the United States.
Some tech leaders — including those at the forefront of AI, like Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman — have suggested that the technology will leave so many people without a job that humans will effectively become creatures of leisure who need to be given some kind of basic universal income to survive.
By AFP
May 21, 2026
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to be a Democratic Party candidate for president in 2028, has ordered agencies to start working on a plan to deal with the job-killing effects of AI - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday ordered officials to start work on a plan to mitigate the job-destroying impact of artificial intelligence, the first US state to do so.
Newsom’s demand comes as fears grow worldwide that AI could render everyone from truck drivers to lawyers unemployed as machines learn to perform tasks that have previously required a human.
The executive order will mobilize state agencies, experts, universities and industry leaders to develop policies around severance standards, employment insurance, worker training and better tracking of hiring and layoffs in an effort to avoid nasty surprises and sudden workforce cuts.
“Businesses are going to make a fortune, and that’s why you cannot continue to have a payroll tax system that taxes jobs and then subsidizes automation,” the governor said in a statement.
Newsom — who is widely expected to be a leading Democratic Party candidate in the 2028 presidential election — said lightning fast developments in AI meant the entire employment system needed to be reimagined.
“California has never sat back and watched as the future happened to us –- and we won’t start now,” he said.
The move comes as figures revealed the US technology sector — which is headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley — slashed more than 52,000 jobs in the first three months of the year, according to the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
On Wednesday, Facebook parent Meta began laying off 8,000 people — around 10 percent of its workforce.
Advances in AI, which have allowed for the automation of increasingly complex tasks, are often cited by companies as the reason for reducing headcounts.
But some industry watchers say firms are using the technology as a pretext for other cost-cutting.
Changes in how we work are reverberating around the world, sparking debate from Asia to Europe to the United States.
Some tech leaders — including those at the forefront of AI, like Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman — have suggested that the technology will leave so many people without a job that humans will effectively become creatures of leisure who need to be given some kind of basic universal income to survive.
Banker: AI will replace ‘lower-value human capital’
By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
May 22, 2026
London's financial district. — Image by © Tim Sandle
The financier Bill Winters has faced backlash over his remarks about near 8,000 staff who are set to lose their roles due to the implementation of AI.
The chief executive of Standard Chartered, Bill Winters, has issued an apology after drawing criticism for comments describing some roles at risk from artificial intelligence as “lower-value human capital.”
Back office functions to be deleted
The controversy, as the BBC reports, follows the bank’s announcement of plans to cut approximately 7,800 back-office positions, one of the earliest large-scale workforce reductions by a major global bank explicitly linked to the growing use of AI technologies. The restructuring effort is aimed at transforming operations and increasing efficiency, with automation expected to replace a number of existing roles.
Speaking earlier in the week, Winters sought to frame the changes not as a traditional cost-cutting exercise, but as part of a broader shift in how the bank allocates resources. “It’s not cost-cutting,” he said, quoted by The Guardian. “It’s replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in.”
However, the phrase quickly sparked backlash from other employees and observers, many of whom viewed the wording as dismissive and dehumanising.
In business and economic terms, human capital theory is used to represent the skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities of employees that contribute to an organization’s productivity and value creation. When a segment of the workforce is described as low-value human capital, it generally means that the organization perceives these roles as contributing less to strategic outcomes, innovation, or revenue generation compared to other roles. The concept of human capital is not universally accepted and it is challenged by economists who see labour power as a key determinant.
In response, Winters took to LinkedIn to clarify his remarks. In his initial post, he stressed that his intention had been to highlight the vulnerability of certain roles to automation, not to diminish the value of the people who performed them.
“I said that lower-value roles are more vulnerable to automation, and that we have a responsibility to help colleagues move into higher-value roles,” he wrote. “That is what a responsible employer should do. We will continue to speak honestly about the impact of technological change, and we will continue to act responsibly in helping our people to adapt and succeed.”
Pale apology
Despite this attempt at clarification, reaction to the post remained mixed. Some readers on LinkedIn have supported the broader message about technological change and reskilling, while others continued to question the language used.
Later, Winters issued a second statement, offering a more direct apology. “I have received a lot of support for the messages in my previous post but still get questions about my choice of words, which I know has caused upset to some colleagues,” he said. “For that I am sorry.”
At the same time, he sought to provide additional context by sharing the full transcript of his earlier remarks, expressing hope that it would offer “a better understanding” of his position. Winters reiterated that the bank’s objective was to support employees through a period of rapid change and help them adapt to evolving demands within the financial sector.
Nevertheless, criticism has persisted. Some commenters argued that the explanation did little to address the underlying concerns. One response noted: “I’m struggling to see the difference between what you said and what is written. This was either a poor choice of words or an honest belief that came out as intended.”
Another was more blunt: “Your comments were utterly disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself for committing them to a post.”
Sensitivity to AI, automation and the future of work
The episode highlights the sensitivity surrounding workforce reductions linked to automation and AI, particularly in industries such as banking where operational transformation is accelerating. While many organisations emphasise reskilling and redeployment, the language used to describe these changes can significantly shape how they are received by employees and the wider public.
Winters’ remarks underscores the challenges leaders face in balancing transparency about technological change with empathy toward those affected.
London's financial district. — Image by © Tim Sandle
The financier Bill Winters has faced backlash over his remarks about near 8,000 staff who are set to lose their roles due to the implementation of AI.
The chief executive of Standard Chartered, Bill Winters, has issued an apology after drawing criticism for comments describing some roles at risk from artificial intelligence as “lower-value human capital.”
Back office functions to be deleted
The controversy, as the BBC reports, follows the bank’s announcement of plans to cut approximately 7,800 back-office positions, one of the earliest large-scale workforce reductions by a major global bank explicitly linked to the growing use of AI technologies. The restructuring effort is aimed at transforming operations and increasing efficiency, with automation expected to replace a number of existing roles.
Speaking earlier in the week, Winters sought to frame the changes not as a traditional cost-cutting exercise, but as part of a broader shift in how the bank allocates resources. “It’s not cost-cutting,” he said, quoted by The Guardian. “It’s replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in.”
However, the phrase quickly sparked backlash from other employees and observers, many of whom viewed the wording as dismissive and dehumanising.
In business and economic terms, human capital theory is used to represent the skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities of employees that contribute to an organization’s productivity and value creation. When a segment of the workforce is described as low-value human capital, it generally means that the organization perceives these roles as contributing less to strategic outcomes, innovation, or revenue generation compared to other roles. The concept of human capital is not universally accepted and it is challenged by economists who see labour power as a key determinant.
In response, Winters took to LinkedIn to clarify his remarks. In his initial post, he stressed that his intention had been to highlight the vulnerability of certain roles to automation, not to diminish the value of the people who performed them.
“I said that lower-value roles are more vulnerable to automation, and that we have a responsibility to help colleagues move into higher-value roles,” he wrote. “That is what a responsible employer should do. We will continue to speak honestly about the impact of technological change, and we will continue to act responsibly in helping our people to adapt and succeed.”
Pale apology
Despite this attempt at clarification, reaction to the post remained mixed. Some readers on LinkedIn have supported the broader message about technological change and reskilling, while others continued to question the language used.
Later, Winters issued a second statement, offering a more direct apology. “I have received a lot of support for the messages in my previous post but still get questions about my choice of words, which I know has caused upset to some colleagues,” he said. “For that I am sorry.”
At the same time, he sought to provide additional context by sharing the full transcript of his earlier remarks, expressing hope that it would offer “a better understanding” of his position. Winters reiterated that the bank’s objective was to support employees through a period of rapid change and help them adapt to evolving demands within the financial sector.
Nevertheless, criticism has persisted. Some commenters argued that the explanation did little to address the underlying concerns. One response noted: “I’m struggling to see the difference between what you said and what is written. This was either a poor choice of words or an honest belief that came out as intended.”
Another was more blunt: “Your comments were utterly disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself for committing them to a post.”
Sensitivity to AI, automation and the future of work
The episode highlights the sensitivity surrounding workforce reductions linked to automation and AI, particularly in industries such as banking where operational transformation is accelerating. While many organisations emphasise reskilling and redeployment, the language used to describe these changes can significantly shape how they are received by employees and the wider public.
Winters’ remarks underscores the challenges leaders face in balancing transparency about technological change with empathy toward those affected.
Big Tech GOP Donor Marc Andreessen Claims AI Better Than Human Workers: ‘Never Gets Sick... Never Files HR Complaints’
“Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them,” one software engineer wrote about tech industry bosses.
OMG HE'S A CONE HEAD
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen appears on the Joe Rogan Experience on May 19, 2026.
(Screenshot from the Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube)
“Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them,” one software engineer wrote about tech industry bosses.
OMG HE'S A CONE HEAD
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen appears on the Joe Rogan Experience on May 19, 2026.
(Screenshot from the Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube)
ANCIENT PERUVIAN CONE HEAD FROM PREHISTORIC
CAVE SITE
Stephen Prager
May 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
A leading billionaire right-wing donor and tech evangelist raised eyebrows during a podcast appearance this week with a blunt explanation for why he believes artificial intelligence is superior to human workers.
The past few months have seen a wave of tech industry layoffs that companies have acknowledged were driven wholly or in part by AI: From Meta, which slashed 8,000 jobs on Wednesday and reassigned thousands of other workers to AI roles; to Intuit, which announced a cut of about 17% of its workforce the same day to put more focus on the emerging technology.
The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who leads one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz, declared as recently as last month that despite report after report of mass layoffs, “'AI job loss’ narratives are all fake,” and the industry would facilitate a “massive jobs boom” because it allows individual workers to be “endlessly more productive.”
But during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience on Tuesday, he seemed to suggest that he viewed the human workforce as not only inferior to AI but also an expendable nuisance that employers would be better off without.
He imagined the programmer of the future “overseeing an org chart of bots” numbering in the thousands, which would go on to exponentially increase productivity.
This, he said, is preferable to the current, inefficient model of hiring human laborers. He used the example of the graphic design work on Rogan’s set to illustrate the point.
“You hire somebody... and you tell them you want a screen display and you want it to be an animated version of the thing you got back here,” he said. “They spend, you know, two weeks doing it. It’s like, ‘Okay, that’s pretty good, but I actually want the whole thing to be whatever, purple and green.’ And they spend a week doing that. And they come back, and you’re like, ‘I actually prefer the old version.’”
“The guy gets, like, pissed at you because he’s like, ‘I just wasted my time.’ The bot’s like, ‘No problem,’ you know, no sweat, like whatever you want, and we can try it 12 more times if you want. Or you tell it, you know, this is terrible. Like, I can’t believe you came back to me with this. It has all these bugs. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll go fix these.’”
“By the way, [it] never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high,” he continued.
“Never gets depressed because his girlfriend broke up with him,” Rogan interjected.
“Never files HR complaints,” Andreessen added.
Andreessen said this mass adoption of “armies” of AI workers would begin in tech fields like coding, but would quickly expand out to other fields like writing, medicine, and law.
He described artificial intelligence as technology that would grant workers a “universal basic superpower.” But while some proponents of AI expansion imagine it as a tool to liberate workers from long hours by automating menial tasks, Andreessen said it was actually doing the opposite for workers in the coding world.
He said one would assume that “if AI coding makes them four times more productive... then maybe they’re working only a fourth the time and now they’ve got a great life,” but “what’s actually happened is virtually to a person, they’re all working more hours than ever to the point where there is a new term of art that’s used in the valley called the ‘AI vampire.’”
“You’re up all night doing AI coding because you are so productive,” Andreessen said approvingly. “You’re getting so much done that you can’t turn off. The opportunity cost of going to sleep is too high because if you go to sleep, you won’t be with your 20 AI coding agents, keeping them working on all the projects that you have them working on. And so people stop sleeping.”
“They’re clearly, clearly, clearly not taking care of themselves, and they’re absolutely ecstatic,” Andreessen said, “because they are able to produce five times, 20 times more code per hour than they could in the past.”
The comments drew widespread backlash from critics across the political spectrum, who noted Andreessen’s cavalier disregard for the fate of human workers in his imagined future scenario.
His mention of “HR complaints” in particular raised red flags for those who noted that the male-dominated worlds of Silicon Valley and venture capitalism have had many high-profile sexual harassment scandals.
But more broadly, it was interpreted as an expression of contempt for workers who demand a modicum of dignity from their jobs.
One software developer, who writes the Substack blog Dialectics of Decline on Substack under the name Scarlet, described Andreessen’s comments as an encapsulation of an attitude that she recently said was “destroying the career I once loved.”
I noticed that my bosses were getting infected with the mind virus sold to them by the AI hype men. They started to believe we weren’t needed anymore, or, if we were, we were now capable of producing 10x the amount of code in the same amount of time...
Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them. They want to streamline their businesses by—ideally—not needing to hire humans at all. They are being sold a dream of a 100% agent-operated business where they purchase tokens instead of labor hours, and at a fraction of the cost. After all, agents won’t ever try to unionize. They don’t need weekends off. They don’t get sick or fall pregnant. They can’t strike. They won’t fight back.
It’s a mindset that Andreessen—one of the most prominent fixtures of the so-called “tech right” that spent big to elect Trump in 2024—is apparently seeking to export to the entire country.
Andreessen Horowitz and its billionaire founders have dumped an unprecedented $115 million to influence elections in the 2026 midterm cycle, more than other more prominent donors like Elon Musk and George Soros.
According to a report last week from the New York Times:
Already Andreessen Horowitz has put $47.5 million into the crypto super PAC network, Fairshake, since Election Day 2024. And the firm’s interests have expanded beyond crypto. It helped found Leading the Future, a super PAC network focused on electing pro-artificial intelligence legislators, which is modeled on Fairshake, and donated $50 million to it. Fairshake and Leading the Future both back Republicans and Democrats.
Andreessen Horowitz and its co-founders have also together donated $12 million to MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC, including $6 million in March. A trust linked to Mr. Andreessen donated nearly $900,000 to the Republican National Committee that same month.
Andreessen’s comments on Rogan’s show inspired calls from progressive legislators, including Silicon Valley’s Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who said it was an example of why Washington should “tax agentic AI more than workers” rather than providing tax breaks to companies that invest in AI infrastructure.
But the influence of tech oligarchs like Andreessen is also starting to unnerve some on the right, like the influential conservative pundit James Lindsay, who said he was getting “really sick of anti-human tech weirdos leading anything.”
Stephen Prager
May 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
A leading billionaire right-wing donor and tech evangelist raised eyebrows during a podcast appearance this week with a blunt explanation for why he believes artificial intelligence is superior to human workers.
The past few months have seen a wave of tech industry layoffs that companies have acknowledged were driven wholly or in part by AI: From Meta, which slashed 8,000 jobs on Wednesday and reassigned thousands of other workers to AI roles; to Intuit, which announced a cut of about 17% of its workforce the same day to put more focus on the emerging technology.
The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who leads one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz, declared as recently as last month that despite report after report of mass layoffs, “'AI job loss’ narratives are all fake,” and the industry would facilitate a “massive jobs boom” because it allows individual workers to be “endlessly more productive.”
But during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience on Tuesday, he seemed to suggest that he viewed the human workforce as not only inferior to AI but also an expendable nuisance that employers would be better off without.
He imagined the programmer of the future “overseeing an org chart of bots” numbering in the thousands, which would go on to exponentially increase productivity.
This, he said, is preferable to the current, inefficient model of hiring human laborers. He used the example of the graphic design work on Rogan’s set to illustrate the point.
“You hire somebody... and you tell them you want a screen display and you want it to be an animated version of the thing you got back here,” he said. “They spend, you know, two weeks doing it. It’s like, ‘Okay, that’s pretty good, but I actually want the whole thing to be whatever, purple and green.’ And they spend a week doing that. And they come back, and you’re like, ‘I actually prefer the old version.’”
“The guy gets, like, pissed at you because he’s like, ‘I just wasted my time.’ The bot’s like, ‘No problem,’ you know, no sweat, like whatever you want, and we can try it 12 more times if you want. Or you tell it, you know, this is terrible. Like, I can’t believe you came back to me with this. It has all these bugs. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll go fix these.’”
“By the way, [it] never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high,” he continued.
“Never gets depressed because his girlfriend broke up with him,” Rogan interjected.
“Never files HR complaints,” Andreessen added.
Andreessen said this mass adoption of “armies” of AI workers would begin in tech fields like coding, but would quickly expand out to other fields like writing, medicine, and law.
He described artificial intelligence as technology that would grant workers a “universal basic superpower.” But while some proponents of AI expansion imagine it as a tool to liberate workers from long hours by automating menial tasks, Andreessen said it was actually doing the opposite for workers in the coding world.
He said one would assume that “if AI coding makes them four times more productive... then maybe they’re working only a fourth the time and now they’ve got a great life,” but “what’s actually happened is virtually to a person, they’re all working more hours than ever to the point where there is a new term of art that’s used in the valley called the ‘AI vampire.’”
“You’re up all night doing AI coding because you are so productive,” Andreessen said approvingly. “You’re getting so much done that you can’t turn off. The opportunity cost of going to sleep is too high because if you go to sleep, you won’t be with your 20 AI coding agents, keeping them working on all the projects that you have them working on. And so people stop sleeping.”
“They’re clearly, clearly, clearly not taking care of themselves, and they’re absolutely ecstatic,” Andreessen said, “because they are able to produce five times, 20 times more code per hour than they could in the past.”
The comments drew widespread backlash from critics across the political spectrum, who noted Andreessen’s cavalier disregard for the fate of human workers in his imagined future scenario.
His mention of “HR complaints” in particular raised red flags for those who noted that the male-dominated worlds of Silicon Valley and venture capitalism have had many high-profile sexual harassment scandals.
But more broadly, it was interpreted as an expression of contempt for workers who demand a modicum of dignity from their jobs.
One software developer, who writes the Substack blog Dialectics of Decline on Substack under the name Scarlet, described Andreessen’s comments as an encapsulation of an attitude that she recently said was “destroying the career I once loved.”
I noticed that my bosses were getting infected with the mind virus sold to them by the AI hype men. They started to believe we weren’t needed anymore, or, if we were, we were now capable of producing 10x the amount of code in the same amount of time...
Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them. They want to streamline their businesses by—ideally—not needing to hire humans at all. They are being sold a dream of a 100% agent-operated business where they purchase tokens instead of labor hours, and at a fraction of the cost. After all, agents won’t ever try to unionize. They don’t need weekends off. They don’t get sick or fall pregnant. They can’t strike. They won’t fight back.
It’s a mindset that Andreessen—one of the most prominent fixtures of the so-called “tech right” that spent big to elect Trump in 2024—is apparently seeking to export to the entire country.
Andreessen Horowitz and its billionaire founders have dumped an unprecedented $115 million to influence elections in the 2026 midterm cycle, more than other more prominent donors like Elon Musk and George Soros.
According to a report last week from the New York Times:
Already Andreessen Horowitz has put $47.5 million into the crypto super PAC network, Fairshake, since Election Day 2024. And the firm’s interests have expanded beyond crypto. It helped found Leading the Future, a super PAC network focused on electing pro-artificial intelligence legislators, which is modeled on Fairshake, and donated $50 million to it. Fairshake and Leading the Future both back Republicans and Democrats.
Andreessen Horowitz and its co-founders have also together donated $12 million to MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC, including $6 million in March. A trust linked to Mr. Andreessen donated nearly $900,000 to the Republican National Committee that same month.
Andreessen’s comments on Rogan’s show inspired calls from progressive legislators, including Silicon Valley’s Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who said it was an example of why Washington should “tax agentic AI more than workers” rather than providing tax breaks to companies that invest in AI infrastructure.
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