Under the best case scenario, AI may present novel opportunities for disease surveillance, diagnostics, and drug-development, but relatively little attention has been paid to the emerging, cataclysmic public health crisis it will cause. The costs are mounting. The noise and air pollution caused by data centers, AI psychosis, and ChatGPT encouraging a teenager to commit suicide are just the start. Aside from the high likelihood of worsening climate change and the existential risks from AI misalignment, the biggest danger no one is prepared for is AI’s potential to rupture the social contract and exacerbate existing crises.
The public health consequences of mass layoffs will be dire. Unsurprisingly, studies consistently find that layoffs worsen health outcomes and lead to premature mortality. The white collar workers AI is already displacing will experience the same devastation neoliberalist economic policy imposed on blue collar workers in recent decades, but their misfortune will cause even more extreme ripple effects, because the US has developed into a white collar service economy where 59% of consumer spending is from the top 20% of earners. The downward spiral has already begun. Block, a financial technology parent company to Square and Cash App, just announced they will lay off 4,000 workers, 40% of their workforce. One-fourth of unemployed Americans have a bachelor’s degree and are spending more time between jobs than their peers with only a high school degree. Recently, when news broke that two CNBC reporters, without a technical background, used AI to replicate Monday.com’s workflow-management platform the company’s stock took a tumble.
While there is a growing recognition that AI will cause a great upheaval, most of the proposed solutions are confined within the same flawed framework that conditions basic necessities on employment. Retraining and upskilling are not meaningful solutions to the massive wave of job loss that is coming to our shores. Firstly, because existing public retraining programs have mixed efficacy at best. Secondly, because it is nearly impossible to design, much less implement at scale, a program to retrain workers when the future is so uncertain.
The public health community doesn’t just need a plan, it needs an entirely new, universalist vision, to address the universal impacts of this emerging technology. Myriad public policy responses exist, but a universal school meals program and Medicare for All are great places to start because both have strong popular and scientific support. Creating universal programs lowers the barrier to entry and recognizes that in the near-term AI will create mass unemployment across the board, including in white-collar and administrative professions. Both of these proposals are tractable, evidence-based interventions that will ensure access to food during a sensitive developmental window and reduce morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. Childhood hunger is associated with worse health and academic outcomes. Conversely, universal free breakfast and lunch have well-demonstrated, positive impacts on behavioral, academic, and health outcomes, such as 17% reduction in obesity and a 29% reduction in morbidity overall. In an August 2025 YouGov poll, 56% supported a universal free breakfast program and 58% supported a universal free lunch program for students. Similarly, life expectancy is longer in countries with publicly funded healthcare systems. Models suggest that if the US had Medicare for All between March 2020 and March 2022, 338,594 lives and hundreds of billions of dollars could have been saved. A 2022 study found that Medicare for All would save about $438 billion dollars in a non-pandemic year. AI is forcing us to reckon with long-standing injustice and inequality embedded in our system. Whatever dangers await us tomorrow, we will be better equipped to face them if we end child hunger and guarantee universal health coverage.