permanent underclass

permanent underclass (plural permanent underclasses)

1. (artificial intelligence, finance) An inescapable subaltern class speculated to emerge if artificial intelligence automates away social mobility.
   • 2025 October 8, Kyle Chayka, “Will A.I. Trap You in the 'Permanent Underclass'?”, in The New Yorker‎^[1]:

     Lower than proletariat workers, the lumpenproletariat includes the indigent and the unemployable, those cast out of the workforce with no recourse, or those who can’t enter it in the first place, such as young workers in times of economic depression. According to some in Silicon Valley, this sorry category will soon encompass much of the human population, as a new lumpenproletariat—or, in modern online parlance, a “permanent underclass”—is created by the accelerating progress of artificial intelligence.

   • 2025 October 27, “The new language of AI tech workers”, in NPR‎^[2]:

     So there are all these tweets that I saw joking about the permanent underclass. And they usually went something along the lines of like, we only have five months to escape the permanent underclass. Like, you better work hard because you're going to get stuck in the permanent underclass

   • 2026 March, Sam Kriss, “Child's Play: Tech's New Generation and the End of Thinking”, in Harper's Magazine‎^[3]:

     People will endure a lot of indignity to avoid being left behind without VC money when the great bifurcation takes place. Nobody wants to be part of the permanent underclass.