Editorial: Don't let AI change the meaning of Labor Day

🔊 Listen to this In an era with hyper-development of Artificial Intelligence and all the disruption, uncertainty and even fear it increasingly evokes, it seems particularly important to emphasize the uniqueness of Labor Day: It is the only national holiday that does not commemorate an event, individual or distinct group of people. It's about everyone who makes everything around us happen, all the time. It's a day about the countless people who do not reach any level of fame, but who do all the work that makes fame possible for others. The vast, off-screen crews that make movie stars appear in movies. The numerous workers who make ships that famous people christen, who keep planes in the air, streets safe, household water flowing. They assemble all the components that keep our abodes cool in summer and warm in winter. They stitch together the clothes we wear, manufacture the equipment our athletes use from Tee-ball to World Series and every game in between. They nurse our ill back to health, or comfort them in death. They build the cribs and coffins, grow the food we eat, deliver it, stand behind checkout counters and sell it, or prep it in a restaurant. And yes, they manage the waste we make, so we don't have to even think about it —at least until a sewer line clogs, and then they come and fix it. Today it feels as if we stand on a cusp, at the edge of how the labor market worked for centuries, and how it will work in the future. Automation seems to threaten more and more corners of the employment. Hardware and grocery stores close down human-run cashier stations in favor of of scanners and card readers. Toll booths have evaporated into thin air. Gas stations require you to pump your own (unless you are in New Jersey, where self-serve is still outlawed). People grow comfortable getting advice, medical insight or homework help from chat bots. Teachers grapple with how, exactly, they are to implement or exclude use of AI in student assignments. Those entering the job market increasingly look for something AI proof, or at least resistant. Over the centuries, trains replaced boys leading mules along canal paths. Automobiles turned horses into sport rather than necessity and made 'wheelwright' and 'farrier' niche jobs most suitable for living museums. Electricity ended the days of oil-lamp sales and steam-powered engines turning belts at factories. In that regard, AI simply continues a trend we are — at least historically — quite use to. Artificial Intelligence will continue to alter the definition of 'labor.' That's clear. But it can't alter the meaning of Labor Day. We can't let it. We quote a 2024 editorial: 'People doing what has to be done, keeping every aspect of everything that matters from failing, making sure that all those politicians, overpaid business execs, old media pundits and new media 'influencers' can crow about their accomplishments. 'This is about your mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, and everyone else who just did their jobs, who keep doing their jobs, who will always work not because they want some profound acknowledgment but because they know if the daily labor of most of us in this nation ever stops, everything stops.' Happy Labor Day.