Word.ws English Dictionary

useless class

useless class noun: a segment of the population that can no longer contribute to society due to artificial intelligence having supplanted the roles they were previously able to fulfill.

Noun

useless class (plural useless classes)

  1. A segment of the population that can no longer contribute to society due to artificial intelligence having supplanted the roles they were previously able to fulfill.
    • In the 19th century the Industrial Revolution created a huge urban proletariat, and socialism spread because no other creed managed to answer the unprecedented needs, hopes and fears of this new working class. Liberalism eventually defeated socialism only by adopting the best parts of the socialist...2017 February 24, Yuval Noah Harari, “The rise of the useless class”, in TED, archived from the original on 15 Apr 2022
    • We should be preparing ourselves not just for AI and automation to wipe out unprecedented numbers of jobs, but for the technical solutions posed by the AI leaders to also pose a threat to human mental health. We need to start preparing now as a society, rather than hoping that others and not...2025 February 11, Ewan Morrison, “Surviving Within Artificial Intelligence's Useless Class”, in Psychology Today, archived from the original on 15 Jul 2025

Examples of useless class in a sentence

  • This “useless class” will not merely be unemployed — it will be unemployable.2017 February 24, Yuval Noah Harari, “The rise of the useless class”, in TED, archived from the original on 15 Apr 2022:
  • We need to start preparing now as a society, rather than hoping that others and not ourselves will be included in “the useless class.”2025 February 11, Ewan Morrison, “Surviving Within Artificial Intelligence's Useless Class”, in Psychology Today, archived from the...

Forms of useless class

pluraluseless classes

Origin of useless class

Coined by Israeli intellectual and historian Yuval Noah Harari in 2016.

Questions about useless class

What does useless class mean?
Useless class means a segment of the population that can no longer contribute to society due to artificial intelligence having supplanted the roles they were previously able to fulfill.
How do you use useless class in a sentence?
This “useless class” will not merely be unemployed — it will be unemployable.
What part of speech is useless class?
Useless class is a noun.
What is the plural of useless class?
The plural of useless class is useless classes.

Words near useless class in the dictionary

  1. usehold
  2. useless
  3. useless as teats on a boar hog
  4. useless as tits on a boar hog
  5. useless as tits on a bull
  6. useless class
  7. useless classes
  8. useless eater
  9. useless eaters
  10. useless lesbian
  11. useless lesbians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: useless class (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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