Andrew Yang has long warned that automation would disrupt the American workforce, and now he says the crisis he predicted is no longer a distant possibility — it’s unfolding in real time. In a recent interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish, Yang stated that artificial intelligence could eliminate between 30 and 40 million jobs over the next decade, a development he described as “devastating” and “catastrophic” for countless communities. Yang first raised alarms about automation during his 2020 presidential campaign, cautioning that self-driving trucks alone could displace up to a million truck drivers — many of them men with limited formal education — potentially triggering widespread social unrest. His warnings, once seen as speculative, are now backed by emerging data showing AI’s growing ability to perform tasks across a wide range of industries. Recent research underscores the scale of the shift. MIT’s Iceberg Index, released last week, found that current AI systems can technically perform 11.7% of U.S. labor tasks — equivalent to about $1.2 trillion in wages — across sectors like finance, healthcare, and professional services. Meanwhile, internal Amazon documents and reporting from The New York Times reveal that the company believes automation could help it avoid hiring more than 600,000 workers in the coming years, with a long-term goal of automating 75% of its operations. Major corporations including Salesforce, Walmart, HP, IBM, and Fiverr have all cited AI as a factor in recent layoffs, signaling that job losses are already underway. Yang estimates that 44% of American jobs involve repetitive manual or cognitive work — tasks that are highly vulnerable to automation. This figure aligns with broader studies: the IMF’s 2024 analysis suggests that around 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be affected by AI, with half benefiting and half suffering. A McKinsey Global Institute report from last month found that automation technologies could theoretically handle more than half of all U.S. work hours. While some experts, like computer science professor Roman Yampolskiy, have predicted near-total unemployment within five years, Yang dismissed such extreme scenarios as unrealistic. Instead, he based his 30 to 40 million job loss projection on the idea that even half of the 44% of vulnerable jobs could be displaced over the next ten years. To address the crisis, Yang is reviving his signature policy: a universal basic income of $1,000 per month for every American adult, funded by a tax on AI companies. He points to a proposal by Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei, who suggested a “token tax” on AI firms. Yang argues that since tech giants are generating hundreds of billions in value — much of it built on public data and compute power — a “compute tax” or similar levy could raise substantial funds quickly. With U.S. GDP per capita at about $85,000 in 2024, Yang views his $12,000 annual Freedom Dividend as a reasonable and modest response. He acknowledges that financial support alone won’t solve deeper issues like purpose and community, but stresses that without economic stability, millions risk falling into hardship and radicalization. “We could be doing much, much more for the millions of Americans who are going to be displaced,” Yang said, delivering a final warning: the time to act is now.