And when people advocate for programmers unionizing, I don't see why we'd be any different. There'd be people employed doing X, a programmer would make something to automate X, and "our" union would be trying to save their job.
It makes sense to license electricians, crane operators, doctors, lawyers, and many other professions who do safety-critical work.
Only a very small minority of programmers work on software that could actually hurt someone (at Boeing, Toyota, etc...).
There's no reason to create a legal barrier to entry for programming.
Similarly, there would never be a general licence for "programmer". But some day there probably will be (and indeed probably should be) specific licences for things like "have back-end access to personal medical data", "modify source code of nuclear reactor control software", and "install networking hardware via which credit card details are transmitted".
It's not about creating a barrier to entry for a whole profession. It's about licencing people to work in specific situations where there are specific risks, such as privacy risks, public safety risks, and risk of fraud.
The AI doesn't exist. People will make it. That is when you know what it will do.
If we make the union, we can make plenty of reasons and ways for it to be different. Whether or not those result in a difference, is not very predictable.
Our day jab is literally understanding, predicting, and building complex systems out of ideas. Why would we be unable to make a union with a reasonable - even likely - chance of not developing the same problems these (much) older unions have?
But it will require much less people to build the AI. And that's the only relevant point when stepping into the investors' shoes.
Tell me you've never seen this story... I've worked with managers who would absolutely go for hiring more people to continuously do the same stupid task rather than improving the process. If they were protected, it would be a very sad place to work.
The real problem is wealth concentration. Unions and professional associations are one way for the working class to push back when the society they live in is failing to do so.
It's the wrong tool, not addressing the root cause, has implementation challenges, and will create problems in the future.
But the ship is sinking right now. Since the 1970s.