CONCEPT
The Useless Class
Harari's 2017 prediction of a new class: not exploited or oppressed but irrelevant—people devoid of economic, political, or artistic value, contributing nothing to prosperity or power, rendered unemployable by automation.
In Homo Deus, Harari forecast the twenty-first century's creation of 'a massive new unworking class'—populations rendered economically superfluous by AI and automation. Not displaced temporarily (unemployed) but structurally (unemployable). The useless class would lack not merely jobs but function: the economy does not need their labor, the military does not need their bodies, algorithmic governance may not need their votes. They are casualties of efficiency, not victims of injustice. The phrase 'useless' was chosen to offend—to name the psychological devastation of irrelevance in societies where productive labor defines identity, social standing, political voice.
In The You On AI Field Guide
When Harari offered the prediction in 2017, it felt distant—futurist provocation, decades away. The 2025-26 AI capabilities made the mechanism visible ahead of schedule. Not mass unemployment (which did not occur), but the compression of the expertise premium—the gradual devaluation of human cognitive labor as AI raises the floor of competent performance. The dynamic: before AI, senior and junior developers