NEW YORK, NY— While New York moves to limit the data center infrastructure behind the artificial intelligence boom, AI is already powering much of the City's economy and reshaping its workforce.
A new poll suggests many workers are not convinced they will share in the payoff.
Two-thirds of U.S. workers surveyed by Ipsos for Groundwork Collaborative said AI will make the worker experience worse, primarily by eliminating jobs and increasing pressure on employees to be more productive.
Just 30 percent said it would improve their work by freeing them from repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on more challenging work.
For Alex Jacquez, senior vice president of policy, advocacy and research at Groundwork Collaborative, that divide reflects a broader economic split.
"If you have a college degree, if you're making over $100,000 a year, things are pretty good," Jacquez said. "You're way more likely to be optimistic about AI adoption."
Nearly half of workers with college degrees said AI would improve their jobs, compared with 19 percent of workers with a high school education.
The people most positioned to benefit from the technology, Jacquez said, are also the people most likely to already have economic security.
AI has become one of the major forces driving investor expectations, with a handful of technology companies accounting for an increasingly large share of the stock market.
The Magnificent Seven, a nickname for the seven of the largest and most influential U.S. technology companies, represented about 32.5 percent of the S&P 500 in July.
Investors are also betting on the broader supply chain behind the AI boom.
In "pick-and-shovel" investments, they put money into the companies that provide the technology and tools AI requires.
AI needs large computing power to provide fast results; investors buy stocks in data centers and computing chips.
Data centers use water to cool off, consuming an estimated 17 billion gallons of water in 2023; investors bet on companies like Essential Utilities, which is developing water infrastructure for a Pennsylvania data-center project.
Workers are less convinced those gains will reach them.
In the Groundwork poll, 51 percent said the benefits of widespread AI adoption would go mostly or entirely to business owners and executives.
Only 6 percent said workers would receive most or all of the benefits.
"If we continue to see this kind of increasing concentration of the stock market in just a few of these firms that are connected to the AI build out," Jacquez said, "I think this is bad on net for society because only a small number of people own the shares."
The technology is generating excitement in two places at once: on Wall Street, where investors are pricing in massive future growth, and in corporate workplaces, where employees are being asked to adapt to it.
For workers, the consequences may not always look like a robot taking someone's job.
They may look like an algorithm deciding who gets hired, how quickly an employee should work or whether someone deserves a raise.
Terri Gerstein, director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative, said AI is increasingly being used across the employment process, from hiring to workplace management and termination.
"Some of the key questions are: one, will AI replace people? Will it eliminate jobs?" Gerstein said.
But she said the more immediate concern may be how employers use AI to manage the people who remain.
An algorithm can determine how workers are evaluated, scheduled or disciplined, potentially moving decisions that once required a human manager into automated systems.
"I've heard it referred to as management by robots," Gerstein said.
And, that is where Gerstein sees a role for unions and policymakers.
The AFL-CIO, a federation of 65 labor unions representing nearly 15 million workers, has called for employees to have a say in how AI is introduced into their workplaces.
Gerstein said collective bargaining can give workers a mechanism to negotiate those protections.
"There are some unions that have included in their collective bargaining agreement information about terms and provisions about AI," she said. "If people have unions, they're able to bargain, negotiate about how AI is used in their workplace."
The larger question, she said, is whether policymakers can keep pace with a technology that is spreading faster than the rules governing it.
"It's really a nascent area," Gerstein said. "I think legislators and policymakers really need to keep up."
Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the nation's first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, temporarily pausing state environmental permits for facilities using at least 50 megawatts of power while the state develops new rules.
Hochul said New York cannot allow the industry's growth to raise utility bills, strain the electric grid or consume water without stronger protections.
"The bottom line is progress shouldn't arrive with a higher utility bill, depleted water supply or noise pollution," Hochul said.
At the city level, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has taken a different approach, launching a Public Interest Technology initiative in July that will bring engineers, designers and data specialists into city government to build digital tools for New Yorkers.
His administration has also inherited a government already using AI for tasks ranging from drafting communications to analyzing complaints and processing services.
In July, Anthropic announced it would double its New York City workforce to about 1,000 employees and lease all 16 floors of a 466,000-square-foot building at 330 Hudson Street in Hudson Square.
"We appreciate any investment in our city and we want our city to continue to have a strong economy," Mamdani said in a July interview with NY1.
Mamdani added the City's economic success should ultimately be judged by whether it benefits working people.
"A lot of these companies pay very little tax and take advantage of numerous loopholes and allowances," Jacquez said.
He argued that policymakers should find ways to capture some of the wealth generated by the AI buildout and return it to the broader public.
"Cleaning up our tax system to be able to capture the gains from this potentially, you know, huge build out and profit," he said, "I think is going to be critical for policymakers."
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