Every year, May 1st arrives with red flags, slogans, and a collective remembrance of battles fought for labour rights. But as we enter the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the question arises: what happens when the workers themselves disappear?
Whether through traditional robotics and automation or newer generative models, AI has moved far beyond chatbots and recommendation engines. It is now writing, designing, diagnosing, predicting, and even completing tasks independently. Work that once needed a room full of experts can now be done in seconds by a simple algorithm. Factories are going "lights out," a term for production units that require no human workers and, therefore, no lighting. Nothing, be it logistics, journalism, customer service, coding, or designing, is untouched. The heart of International Labour Day, the labourer, is being eroded by automation quicker than anyone would expect. In China, many factories are called "dark factories," as automated robots work around the clock without human oversight.
Besides, e-commerce platforms like JD.com and Alibaba already rely heavily on AI for logistics, inventory management, and customer service, drastically reducing the need for human workers. In some Chinese cities, autonomous delivery robots have replaced traditional couriers, while AI-driven manufacturing hubs in Shenzhen are setting global standards for fully automated production lines. The decline of human labor is not a distant future; it is already underway.
We have been told that as old jobs vanish, new ones will appear. But the numbers do not lie. The World Economic Forum projects that AI will displace 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025. Most new "jobs" require high-level digital skills inaccessible to most people. A garment worker in Gazipur or a driver in Barishal will not become an AI engineer overnight. Research published in Technology in Society suggests that mass replacement, not retraining, is the more realistic outcome and that structural, technological unemployment may become the new norm.
Larry Boyer pointed out in Medium that the Fourth Industrial Revolution mirrors the Second: machines are again displacing human labour faster than new markets. AI will undoubtedly create new industries and opportunities. However, these roles require rapid, expensive reskilling that most workers in emerging economies struggle to access. According to Harvard Business Review, the average half-life of skills is now less than five years, and in some fields, as low as two and a half years. Millions of workers may not just need up-skilling; they may need complete reskilling to survive.
Our economy is heavily dependent on labour-intensive industries. The garment sector employs over four million people, most of whom are women. As automation technologies like sew-bots advance, Bangladesh's traditional advantage in low-cost labour could evaporate, threatening the foundation of our export-led economic model. Informal labour accounts for a significant portion of the Bangladeshi workforce, and the disruption from AI could leave millions without safety nets traditionally extended to formal employees. Despite this looming threat, our public and private sectors have yet to invest meaningfully in large-scale reskilling or digital literacy initiatives, exposing workers to an uncertain future.
The crisis is only deepening. As outlined by the World Bank, South Asia's economic prospects are dimming due to climate pressures, debt vulnerabilities, and a fragile fiscal space. Job creation will become even harder as AI accelerates the disappearance of work as we know it. In a country where labour laws are already fragile, and unionizing comes at a high cost, the loss of labour itself could collapse rights, identity, and economic dignity because you can't have labour rights if you don't have labour.
Around the world, governments and private sectors are beginning to recognize that preparing workers for the AI economy is no longer optional. Some countries have launched aggressive reskilling programs to retrain millions in digital, technical, and critical thinking skills. Bangladesh must not fall behind. Investment in AI literacy, universal access to affordable retraining programs, and support for displaced workers through targeted social protections are no longer luxuries. They are imperatives.
In the spirit of this year's International Labour Day, we must start a serious conversation about universal basic income (UBI), where all citizens receive a guaranteed regular payment from the government regardless of employment status, ensuring a basic level of financial security even in an age where traditional jobs are disappearing. Importantly, discussions about UBI must not be confined within the borders of wealthy nations. Just as climate change knows no borders, the economic disruptions fueled by AI technologies developed primarily in rich countries affect workers globally. Therefore, the responsibility to protect human dignity through policies like UBI must be considered an international imperative. The future must also include broader discussions about ethical AI deployment, new definitions of human value beyond productivity, and the reinvention of unions. It must embrace lifelong learning, AI literacy, and a commitment to worker-centred innovation.
Otherwise, our future generations may celebrate May Day not in remembrance of human struggle but in mourning of human redundancy. Nonetheless, hope remains if we dare to redefine work, rights, and dignity for an AI-driven world.
The writer is a graduate student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
