The public debate about AI and the middle class tends to focus on job losses, but one essay argues that this misses what blue-collar workers are actually saying. The author, who has spent much of their career around people who work with their hands, says that electricians and warehouse workers who start early and work late rarely get a useful account of what AI means for them.
Instead of doom-laden predictions, the author points to a more practical reality: AI can be a tool that empowers these workers and the businesses they keep running. The piece suggests that the real opportunity lies in how AI helps blue-collar operations become more efficient, rather than in some distant future of automation replacing them.
The essay is a single perspective, so it does not engage with counterarguments about job displacement or the limits of AI in manual trades. But it offers a useful corrective to the assumption that the middle class only hears about AI as a threat.