Missouri senator Josh Hawley warned today that AI will create a caste system in America.

In one of his most forceful attacks yet on Silicon Valley, the Republican argued that unchecked advances in AI technology would hand unprecedented power to a small elite while hollowing out America’s working class.

Speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC, Hawley warned that the country risks a future in which truckers, cashiers and entry-level professionals are pushed aside by machines. At the same time, the “tech barons” who built them would amass wealth and influence beyond anything seen before. “The most powerful people in America will be more powerful than ever,” he said. “We will find ourselves facing a new kind of caste system — genetically modified, ‘perfect’ humans ruling over the imperfect ones, all with the help of the most powerful technology yet known to man.”

The senator, one of Congress’s most outspoken critics of Big Tech, accused leading AI companies of cloaking their ambitions in lofty rhetoric while pursuing what he described as a “transhumanist ideology” — a belief that technology can allow humans to transcend their limits, even mortality itself. To illustrate his point, Hawley invoked the Epic of Gilgamesh and Aldous Huxley, saying that the pursuit of immortality has always been a temptation that ends in ruin.  “For ancient auditors, the moral of Gilgamesh was plain,” he said. “Our humanity is joined to our mortality; our dignity is bound up with our frailty.”

Hawley warned that advances in automation could soon eliminate millions of jobs, citing estimates that half of entry-level white-collar positions could disappear within five years. Self-driving trucks, he added, would imperil the livelihoods of millions more across the transportation sector. “Where exactly are the new jobs supposed to come from?” he asked. “Sweeping floors in data centres? Mining rare earths in Greenland? What exactly is the future they’re [tech elites] promising?”

The senator has already introduced several AI-focused bills, and last month said that he was starting an investigation into Meta’s generative AI products and whether they posed harms to children. In his position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, Hawley called on Meta to turn over documents related to a report that said Meta had allowed AI bots to have “sensual” and “romantic” conversations with children.

Today, he called for sweeping reforms to rein in the technology, including new property rights over personal data, tighter guardrails around children’s use of AI, and stricter oversight of how the systems are deployed in the workplace. Hawley also urged reserving certain roles exclusively for people — from driving to providing medical advice — to prevent what he sees as a dangerous erosion of human responsibility. “AI should serve human beings, not the other way around,” he argued.

“Those who try to transcend their humanity risk losing it altogether, and enslaving everyone around them,” Hawley warned. “Our frailties teach us humility. Our limits make us free. That is the American way. Let’s keep it so.”