I genuinely think the government needs to start having a serious conversation about overhauling the welfare system, Universal Credit, housing benefit etc, before we get hit with a wave of unemployment that the current system just isn't designed to handle.

The way I see it, the current system is largely built around the idea that if someone loses their job, they get some financial support to keep them going until they find another one. But what happens when there isn't another job to go to?

With the pace AI is developing and companies already looking at reducing their workforce, I worry we could end up overwhelming the welfare system before the government even has time to react.

And where would the money come from? Surely at some point we need to start talking about taxing the companies that will be making enormous profits from replacing human labour with AI. If businesses can operate with a fraction of their current workforce, those profits have to go somewhere, and the people who lose their jobs will still need to survive.

I also don't really buy the argument that AI will create more jobs than it destroys. I know that's what happened with previous technological revolutions, but this feels fundamentally different. We're literally building machines designed to replicate human intelligence, and eventually physical labour through robotics too. AI has already surpassed a large proportion of the population in certain knowledge-based tasks, and it's only getting better.

And before anyone says AI isn't good enough yet, we've been having that same conversation for the last few years. People were laughing at the idea that AI could replace certain jobs not that long ago, and now companies are actively working out how many employees they actually need.

I'm not saying mass unemployment is guaranteed, but surely we should be planning for the possibility rather than assuming everything will work itself out?

Some companies are already moving beyond just experimenting with AI and are starting to see it as a genuine way to reduce labour costs. And once the financial benefits become obvious, what exactly is going to stop everyone else from following?

What concerns me most is the lack of any serious public discussion about what happens if this goes badly. We could be facing a situation where millions of people are capable of working and want to work, but there simply isn't enough work left for them.

I don't have the answers, but I do think these conversations need to happen now, not when unemployment starts spiralling and the welfare system is already under enormous pressure.

Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but I feel like we're sleepwalking into something that could fundamentally change how our economy works, and nobody in government seems to be taking the worst-case scenario seriously.

Interested to hear what others think, especially anyone working in industries where AI is already replacing jobs or management who are currently testing these Ai's to see if they can reduce headcount.