Indiana prides itself on work. What happens when AI takes our jobs?

Indianapolis Star

20-05-2025

Strip away much of the toxicity and rancor, and a common throughline emerges in recent political developments at both the state and federal level: work. Work is central to our political and cultural identities.
I'll admit that I've felt this personally. After leaving an intense, all-consuming job for something slower-paced, I've struggled with just how much of my identity is tied up in what I do.
To oversimplify a complex phenomenon, much of the appeal of Trumpism is rooted in emotions and anxieties about work, whether it's about jobs that went overseas or jobs that are being taken by perceived interlopers.
Consider the only seemingly certain outcome in the federal policy fight over Medicaid reform: the imposition of work requirements. Or the most significant policy shift in Gov. Mike Braun's Make Indiana Healthy Again agenda: again, work requirements for nutrition assistance.
Or look at the main argument advocates make when pushing for more investment in child care, public transit, or mental health services: these are framed as tools to strengthen the workforce. And of course, for most of us, our access to health care remains tied directly to employment.
Set aside the fact that work requirements don't really work, or that the workforce justification for social investment is dubious at best. What matters is the political and cultural resonance of these ideas. Americans – especially Hoosiers – overwhelmingly believe that work is a duty and a responsibility, and that there's intrinsic dignity in working hard to put food on the table.
It's a reasonable, even admirable, worldview. American industriousness and Midwestern grit have fueled one of the most extraordinary runs of prosperity in world history, and at the very core of that story is work.
Taken together, this is our dominant political philosophy, not only in Indiana but the U.S. overall: the politics of personal responsibility. In this framework, work is central to how we understand ourselves, and the proper role of government is to step in to help people only to the extent that they are incapable of helping themselves through work.
All of that is about to be tested.
AI.
I'm talking, of course, about artificial intelligence. A couple caveats: Making specific predictions about the evolution of AI is a fool's errand. Let's also set aside the more extreme AI doomsday scenarios, not because they aren't worth thinking about, but because they distract from what's already happening. The one thing we do know is that everything we think we know about work is going to change.
It's worth engaging with the standard free-market response here. The argument goes like this: Technological revolutions always bring disruption and fear, but they also create new opportunities we can't yet imagine. When the dust settles, most workers are better off than before. It happened with the industrial revolution, the automobile and the internet, so why should AI be different?
They could be right, of course. But many serious observers argue this time is, in fact, different, for a very specific reason. In all those earlier shifts, humans remained at the center. People drove innovation and strategy. Adoption of new technology was guided by firm human hands. Automation increased, but people were the ones doing the automating.
This time, the automation is being automated, and that changes everything. All signs point to the idea that we are on the verge of unleashing an autonomous superintelligence chiefly tasked with advancing itself.
This is the furthest thing from an original insight. Read analysis like the AI 2027 report for a deeper dive. For more on workforce trends, read the work of people like Brookings' Molly Kinder, whose research has found that the jobs in the most imminent danger are clerical jobs in the service sector. These jobs are not glamorous, but they offer stability and a foothold in the middle class. They are also predominantly held by women who are often a primary breadwinner for their families.
What happens when those jobs go away, and soon?
But this column isn't about technology or the workforce. It's about politics. And the central question is this: Can a political culture so tightly bound to the idea of work handle what's coming?
Everyone is aware of the issue. Every state, including Indiana, has some form of AI task force grappling with these questions. But those efforts tend to focus on sectors (which industries are most at risk?) or skills (what do workers need to stay competitive?).
What many people expect, though, is not just a shift in the type of work, but a sharp reduction in the amount of work available for people to do. Productivity and innovation will likely soar and those advances will almost entirely be machine-driven. Entire categories of jobs will become superfluous and irrelevant, much faster than most people think.
So how do we reconcile that with a political framework in which work is the condition for receiving help or being seen as a contributing member of society? In a political culture where 'able-bodied' people who don't work are cast as takers, or where government help is derided as a 'handout,' how do we rethink the relationship between work and worth?
It might seem silly or alarmist to make this argument at a time when we have many more job openings than available workers. And there are many reasons why this could not go the way most observers think it will. See above about the folly of making predictions.
But, if this big shift does happen, it will happen, to borrow the famous Hemingway phrase, 'gradually, then suddenly.' We are in the gradual growth phase right now. If we wait until we know it is happening to act, it could be too late.
At some point – maybe not in 2027, or even 2032, but eventually – we'll have to confront the question of how to decouple work from survival. Or even more radically, from thriving. In all likelihood, the means and resources will be there. I'm not so sure about the will.
And frankly, looking at Hoosier politics in 2025, it doesn't feel like we're anywhere close to even being ready for this conversation.