Democrat Lisa McCormick sounding an alarm about job-killing Artificial Intelligence

While Silicon Valley dreams of driverless cars and algorithms that can outthink any human, progressive New Jersey Democrat Lisa McCormick is issuing a warning to the rest of us: Wake up.

Artificial Intelligence isn’t just the next shiny gadget—it’s a tidal wave that’s already crashing into the American workforce, and Washington is nowhere near ready. The economic earthquake is underway, she says, and too many lawmakers are still pretending the tremors are just a passing storm.

From Paterson to Princeton, from the ports of Newark to call centers in Cherry Hill, New Jersey workers are already feeling the shock.

Voice actors in New Brunswick—once hired to narrate audiobooks or produce training modules—are being replaced by synthetic clones of their own voices. Game developers in Secaucus, already battling unstable contracts and crunch-time burnout, are being let go while software churns out digital environments and storylines on demand.

And soon, thousands of truckers on the New Jersey Turnpike may find themselves unemployed when autonomous rigs become standard, not science fiction.

McCormick isn’t peddling panic. She’s trying to steer a nation asleep at the wheel back onto the road.

“The point isn’t whether AI will change work,” she said. “It’s how it will change work—and whether ordinary people will share in the wealth, or just bear the losses while billionaires get richer on code they didn’t even write.”

Unlike the assembly lines of the 20th century, which replaced muscle with machines, today’s artificial intelligence is gunning for the mind—thinking, writing, decision-making.

It's going after jobs that once felt untouchable: junior lawyers, graphic designers, financial analysts, even software engineers.

As McCormick put it bluntly: “If a machine can reason, no job is safe—not even the ones that require a college degree and a clean LinkedIn profile.”

Indeed, the economic elite’s faith in “reskilling” is starting to look like a cruel joke.

Tell a laid-off customer service agent in Edison to “upskill” into what, exactly? Another job that’s next in line for automation? In fields like finance and law, the message from the top is clear: do more with fewer humans.

One AI-augmented lawyer can now generate the briefs and memos that used to require a whole team. Efficiency is the buzzword. Layoffs are the outcome.

An advocate of Universal Basic Income, McCormick doesn’t trust Silicon Valley tech overlords to shower us with dividends from their digital goldmines—back.

“The world needs a plan, not a bribe,” says McCormick, who stunned the political establishment when she took on disgraced former US Senator Bob Menendez and got more votes than any statewide primary challenger to an incumbent since 1980. “It’s imperative that our elected officials devise a credible and fair system for sharing the prosperity of this nation because the billionaires who hoarded profits during COVID and fought to kill the child tax credit are not suddenly going to hand out cash to the rest of us out of the goodness of their hearts.”

McCormick isn’t just issuing warnings. She’s demanding action.

She wants Congress to collect hard data on AI’s impact, create real protections for workers, and push industry to adopt a model that uses AI to augment human labor—not replace it.

Trump Republicans are ramming through federal legislation to prohibit states from regulating AI,

She points to recent Hollywood strikes as proof that organized workers can claw back control.

“Writers and actors saw the threat before the ink dried on the latest AI tools,” she said. “They didn’t wait to be replaced. They drew a line in the sand.”

That kind of courage is in short supply in Washington.

“People in the halls of Congress shrug and say, ‘We’ll adapt.’ That’s the same line we heard before the factories closed, before the pensions vanished, before the opioid crisis took hold in hollowed-out towns,” said

Across New Jersey, the danger is real.

The 5 million Americans who make a living behind the wheel are staring down the barrel of extinction as robotaxis roam the streets of Phoenix and Los Angeles, with San Francisco and Austin not far behind.

Once those systems scale up and the insurance industry adjusts, it won’t be long before ride-share drivers in Camden or long-haul truckers passing through the Meadowlands are put out to pasture—not because they’re unskilled, but because they’re human.

Driving large tractor-trailers or delivery trucks is one of the largest occupations in the United States.

McCormick is one of the few voices treating this moment with the urgency it deserves.

She’s asking the questions that too many Democrats won’t touch: What happens when AI generates more wealth than any invention in human history, but only a handful of corporate executives control it? What happens when millions of workers are cast aside, not because they failed—but because the system never cared to bring them along?

Her message is clear. We can either build a future where AI uplifts workers, shortens the workweek, and redistributes productivity gains. Or we can repeat the failures of the past, letting another generation fall through the cracks while the top 1% races ahead, insulated by stock options and server farms.

The machines are coming. Some are already here. And unless Congress acts with the urgency of a five-alarm fire, it won’t be AI that breaks the American middle class—it will be the cowardice of our elected leaders. McCormick is ringing the alarm. The only question is whether anyone in power is willing to listen.