Ex-Governors, Big Tech Launch Coalition To Help Workers 'Navigate the AI Economy' (nytimes.com) 90
"Amid growing public anger over A.I. and a debate over how to regulate it, a group of employers, state governors and foundations has raised $500 million to try to answer some of those questions themselves," reports the New York Times.
"Just how many jobs will AI upend?" asks the Wall Street Journal, reporting that the new coalition says it's time to ready the U.S. workforce for a "major" disruption — no matter how large it turns out to be. The coalition "has so far raised more than $500 million — about half of its multiyear goal — from companies and nonprofit groups. It will initially work with state governments in Arkansas, Maryland, Utah and Connecticut. OpenAI and Anthropic are also involved, and academics including MIT economist David Autor sit on an advisory board." [The new "RAISE US" coalition] will be led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who served under former President Joe Biden, and former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican. Its mandate, they said, isn't just to build retraining programs but also to reconsider decades-old policies such as unemployment insurance and act as a working lab for testing the most effective ways to transition workers to new fields. The group will explore corporate incentives for employers to hold on to workers whose jobs are disrupted by AI and prep them for new roles... The mission of the group is to "pull all the levers at once," Raimondo said. That means teaming up with employers to find ways to help workers gain skills or new roles and joining with educators to roll out different types of training. It also plans to propose policy changes such as tweaking unemployment benefits to let displaced workers continue to get them while they, for instance, start new businesses with AI... In Maryland, the group plans to expand a service-year option in the state to help people gain exposure to such growing fields as healthcare. An effort in Arkansas will focus on supporting "an AI-powered career navigation platform."
More from New York Times: The organization will work primarily with governors... The theory: States generally control their community college systems, which can translate work force policy through course offerings and industry partnerships. The bulk of the budget will fund pilot programs overseen by about 15 staff members and consultants. For example, Maryland will expand a "service year" for recent high school graduates to provide experience in fields where there are shortages, such as health care. In other states, Raise Us hopes to offer "wage insurance" for workers who take lower-paying jobs rather than dropping out of the work force entirely.
The group plans to furnish technical assistance for companies that want to retain workers as A.I. changes their roles, rather than eliminating them. Microsoft, one of the companies backing the organization, said it had already found a promising model: cross-training its entry-level lawyers in different parts of the organization and equipping them with A.I. skills in order for them to be repositioned as technology evolves. "You can think of doing that with almost any job we have," said Brad Smith, vice chair and president at Microsoft. "It creates an opportunity to transfer people from jobs that are being eliminated to jobs that are being created...."
Ms. Raimondo and her colleagues are not fans of a universal basic income, an idea that has gained popularity in Silicon Valley as an answer to job disruption. They emphasize that work provides more than just wages, and plan to focus on helping people find pathways to new jobs. But it's unclear whether A.I. will create jobs at the rate that it will destroy them. Jack Malde studied work force policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center and is now going to work for the Windfall Trust, another A.I.-focused think tank. He said long-term income support might be necessary, even if better models for transitioning workers were found. "The truth is, there's still a lot of uncertainty," Mr. Malde said. "What we think is resilient now might not be resilient later. We're not going to get everything right, so we're going to need those strong safety-net programs."
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: If you think you've seen this movie before, prior to "partnering with governors, employers, and training partners to help the American workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy" with RAISE US, Raimondo and Holcomb partnered with governors, employers and training partners to help U.S. K-12 students make a successful transition to a CS economy with the Governors for Computer Science coalition.
"Just how many jobs will AI upend?" asks the Wall Street Journal, reporting that the new coalition says it's time to ready the U.S. workforce for a "major" disruption — no matter how large it turns out to be. The coalition "has so far raised more than $500 million — about half of its multiyear goal — from companies and nonprofit groups. It will initially work with state governments in Arkansas, Maryland, Utah and Connecticut. OpenAI and Anthropic are also involved, and academics including MIT economist David Autor sit on an advisory board." [The new "RAISE US" coalition] will be led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who served under former President Joe Biden, and former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican. Its mandate, they said, isn't just to build retraining programs but also to reconsider decades-old policies such as unemployment insurance and act as a working lab for testing the most effective ways to transition workers to new fields. The group will explore corporate incentives for employers to hold on to workers whose jobs are disrupted by AI and prep them for new roles... The mission of the group is to "pull all the levers at once," Raimondo said. That means teaming up with employers to find ways to help workers gain skills or new roles and joining with educators to roll out different types of training. It also plans to propose policy changes such as tweaking unemployment benefits to let displaced workers continue to get them while they, for instance, start new businesses with AI... In Maryland, the group plans to expand a service-year option in the state to help people gain exposure to such growing fields as healthcare. An effort in Arkansas will focus on supporting "an AI-powered career navigation platform."
More from New York Times: The organization will work primarily with governors... The theory: States generally control their community college systems, which can translate work force policy through course offerings and industry partnerships. The bulk of the budget will fund pilot programs overseen by about 15 staff members and consultants. For example, Maryland will expand a "service year" for recent high school graduates to provide experience in fields where there are shortages, such as health care. In other states, Raise Us hopes to offer "wage insurance" for workers who take lower-paying jobs rather than dropping out of the work force entirely.
The group plans to furnish technical assistance for companies that want to retain workers as A.I. changes their roles, rather than eliminating them. Microsoft, one of the companies backing the organization, said it had already found a promising model: cross-training its entry-level lawyers in different parts of the organization and equipping them with A.I. skills in order for them to be repositioned as technology evolves. "You can think of doing that with almost any job we have," said Brad Smith, vice chair and president at Microsoft. "It creates an opportunity to transfer people from jobs that are being eliminated to jobs that are being created...."
Ms. Raimondo and her colleagues are not fans of a universal basic income, an idea that has gained popularity in Silicon Valley as an answer to job disruption. They emphasize that work provides more than just wages, and plan to focus on helping people find pathways to new jobs. But it's unclear whether A.I. will create jobs at the rate that it will destroy them. Jack Malde studied work force policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center and is now going to work for the Windfall Trust, another A.I.-focused think tank. He said long-term income support might be necessary, even if better models for transitioning workers were found. "The truth is, there's still a lot of uncertainty," Mr. Malde said. "What we think is resilient now might not be resilient later. We're not going to get everything right, so we're going to need those strong safety-net programs."
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: If you think you've seen this movie before, prior to "partnering with governors, employers, and training partners to help the American workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy" with RAISE US, Raimondo and Holcomb partnered with governors, employers and training partners to help U.S. K-12 students make a successful transition to a CS economy with the Governors for Computer Science coalition.
employers, state governors and foundations (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory, they would work together to come up with clever, well thought out, workable solutions.
In practice, expect cluelessness and politically motivated policies that may help a bit but will probably just make everything worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: It's ex-govs (Score:2)
How about we nationalize all those nice new data centers and pay dividends to all taxpayers? Oh, is that not the sort of solution they had in mind? *Shrug*
Re: (Score:2)
Putting the government in charge of a bad idea is always worse than having someone, anyone, else, in charge of a bad idea.
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While trying to get reelected.
Re: It's ex-govs (Score:2)
They might even believe they're doing good. Politics is a magnet for those kinds of people. C suite too, sometimes, if the company is on solid enough financial footing that morons up top can coast along.
Re:employers, state governors and foundations (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory, they would work together to come up with clever, well thought out, workable solutions. In practice, expect cluelessness and politically motivated policies that may help a bit but will probably just make everything worse.
The set-up sounds like a good way to grift a ton of money while stating in very technical terms that it's a really hard problem to solve. Essentially a very expensive, "Damn, I dunno."
Re:employers, state governors and foundations (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess this is "Learn to Code 2.0"? Learn to Prompt?
Re: employers, state governors and foundations (Score:2)
Holcomb is hated here in Indiana. He wasnâ(TM)t liberal enough for Dems and betrayed his Republican base during his term. Heâ(TM)s a has-been looking for a new political angle.
Re: (Score:2)
Mod FP funny in the theory-practice joke genre.
However the context appears to be America, where the idea of solutions via (significant or complicated) change has become its own joke category. I still like (too much) to fantasize about solution approaches, but I'm increasingly convinced that the USA has passed the point of recovery via less violent evolutionary improvements. The "American way" into the future has been lost and it appears that only revolutionary change is possible now. I have two personal pro
Theater (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything is done for show nowadays.
Re: Theater (Score:2)
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If only we didn't have to buy tickets...
Re: (Score:1)
Nowadays? What rock have you been living under for the last century?
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It's been taken to new levels in the influencer/social media age.
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Indeed, it is. A typical sign of late-stage capitalism, right before it comes all crashing down.
Need all the help we can get -- Give me an F (Score:1)
in this ailing economy
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Consumer spending is only up because the baby boomers are sitting on a shitload of cash from when we used to do stuff like the New deal and the great society. AKA socialism. They are burning through it fast because of our healthcare system and because RVs are fun and they're going to leave basically nothing in their wake. We
Re: (Score:1)
There are only two good jobs for every five Americans.
Are you trying to say the 3 out of five Americans are unemployable just like yourself?
No, rsilvergun claims those 3 out of 5 Americans are underemployed. Just look at the text you clipped out:
Full employment is a lie. You have to count gig workers to get to it. And a shitload of other massively underemployed workers. There are only two good jobs for every five Americans.
Go ahead and agree or disagree with what rsilvergun writes, but let's not misrepresent it, h'mkay?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Need all the help we can get -- Give me an F (Score:3)
I've been reading this for him since the very late '90s, and I don't see what all the fuss is over rsilvergun. The guy's posts aren't bad at all. I've seen s*** posting and that ain't it. Anyone here remember when first post was always the n-word?
Re: Need all the help we can get -- Give me an F (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
7. Massively increased prices on practically everything due to tariffs and oil prices. Oops, that's not a good point on the economy now, is it?
Your list itemizes why the economy is doing great for the owner class, and has everything to do with why it's not doing great for those on the lower end of the scale.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So be part of the owner class.
You can get treasury's that pay almost 5%, you can get CDs that pay more. You can buy index funds.
Got one of those 3% mortgages, good stop paying anything but the minimal monthly and start buying debt at better rates with that money.
Even better rent your current place and move somewhere cheaper, you work from home anyway right?
The simple realty is the current generation of American's largely likes to complain they are not winning but they can't be arsed to play the game.
Re: Need all the help we can get -- Give me an F (Score:2)
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Want to take a gander at this? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
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In other words, "The stats look good, you must be imagining things."
Thanks for the tip, Mr. Biden.
Re: Need all the help we can get -- Give me an F (Score:3)
Except housing. Housing is really expensive. And declining real wages: people working two or three jobs; people choosing not to have kids because times are tight. Or people in medical debt. Or student debt. Or people over 50 trying to get jobs. There are having a tough time of it. But hot damn the Dow Jones off the charts crazy high!!
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I see you do not have to subsist on regular people wages. This is the usual tripe we hear from economists who know nothing about what Americans are going through. Want a hint? Look at credit card debt.
Re: Need all the help we can get -- Give me an F (Score:2)
Re: Need all the help we can get -- Give me an F (Score:1)
I love how you got downvoted for stating facts. Classic passive aggressive behavior here on /.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, if you leave out all the problem, of course things look good. Makes you despicable scum though.
Oh, and
3) "Stable interest rates": https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
4) "slightly elevated but certainly not alarming inflation levels": https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
5) Yep, due to the AI hype. Which is close to crashing. Nothing solid in the growth rates, all hot air.
Obviously, simply lying about things makes them also look good. There are probably more lies in your list, but I am too lazy to do the rese
$500 million (Score:3)
If workers are actually being displaced by AI, then $500 million would be a nice start towards a fund intended to help displaced workers taking lower-paying jobs and/or starting businesses of their own (where they could potentially hire other displaced workers to do something else).
At the same time, I'm sure some wage slave making $15/hr or less will be thrilled to see a laid-off tech bro working next to him getting incentive pay just to take the job. So maybe the emphasis needs to be on small business startups rather than placing people in existing industries.
In any case, handing money over to a bunch of pundits, politicians, and focus groups to study the problem is likely the second-least method for dealing with the problem of AI disruption.
HOW DARE YOU! (Score:3)
That money has been earmarked as "research" funding, and will be used to continue to prop up the tech companies and ex-governors while they pretend to care about the underclasses who are being disrupted. There's no room in the budget to think about handing any of that funding directly to those underclasses. They'll have to come up with their own grift.
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The bubble will burst.
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Okay but people are already losing their jobs now. Also humanoid robot production is scaling up considerably while cost/unit is plummeting. It isn't just tech bros that will feel the pinch.
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Reality is messy and complex and LLMs can't even play chess well.
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Maybe for starting their own businesses, but I don't think just to compensate them for having to take a job that's "beneath them". Like you indicate, if another person makes $15/hour and didn't get a handout because they never made money, it would seem awfully unfair to give someone more money because they used to make more money. Easy to argue that the person coming down should by all logic have more financial resources already than the folks working the jobs. If their lifestyle based on higher income i
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Yeah focusing on small business startups would probably be the smart play, especially if it involves hiring a lot of other displaced workers.
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Elon doesn't actually have that much in cash. Most of his net worth is tied up in assets that would probably lose considerable value if someone killed him and confiscated his property.
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For now it's a thousand here and a thousand there. Also the cited $500 million is a research grant not intended to help anyone actually losing their jobs. But $500 million would go a long way to help some laid off employees start their own businesses. Just not all of them. If the program were successful on a small scale, it would need more funding in the future.
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The $500M isn't in cash, it's credits to spend on AI queries to study the problem.
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A hundred million workers? So you think this fund is handle *every* displaced worker worldwide? Or do you imagine 100 million, a little more than 25% of the US population will lose their jobs to AI?
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If workers are actually being displaced by AI, then $500 million would be a nice start towards a fund intended to help displaced workers taking lower-paying jobs and/or starting businesses of their own
Yeah, I'm sure that less than an hour's pay each at minimum wage (or, to be precise, about $3 each) will solve everyone's problems.
Steal a hundred billion dollars from evil rich people and it adds up to about $600 per worker in the US. Which is to say, less than a week's pay at minimum wage in most states.
Group of elites puts slush a new fund together! (Score:5, Insightful)
SCAM (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a bunch of ex pols grabbing money so they can have nice job where they don't actually do anything.
They will write up some policy position papers (well they'll have chat GPT do it) and make some websites where companies like MS can put their logos. The companies get pretend they are doing something for PR reasons for a few million, literally less they retaining a handful of salaries would cost them.
It is just 'learn to code all over again'
Grifters gonna grift.
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It is just 'learn to code all over again'
Learn to Prompt
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... and get slop.
what's really happening (Score:2)
interesting (Score:2)
Ms. Raimondo and her colleagues are not fans of a universal basic income, an idea that has gained popularity in Silicon Valley as an answer to job disruption.
That is also interesting given the source.
The EIT (earned income tax credit) is more or less UBI. It is probably the most effective program we do have in terms of improving people's economic situation. Okay it is 'means tested' so it is not truly universal but functionally it works similarly in practical application.
Given the other arguments about income insurance etc, I am not sure why we would not look at EIT expansion, including state level implementations, and maybe temporary enhanced credits for class
max dystopian (Score:4, Interesting)
"isn't just to build retraining programs but also to reconsider decades-old policies such as unemployment insurance and act as a working lab for testing the most effective ways to transition workers to new fields" ... WHAT EXACTLY? This is to ensure the worker caste system remains intact.
Also known as "Let's find a way to make this the worker's responsibility, so that capital can continue to grow its already massive wealth."
- Increase unemployment insurance contributions because you know that fund is going to dry up quick when it gets tapped.
- Transition workers to new fields like
- training programs: so I gotta go back to college or trade school again? FER WHAT??
"an AI-powered career navigation platform."
Also known as "feeding the hand that bites you" - Let's take public funding and feed it to the AI companies that are setting trillions of dollars on fire. Fixed!
AI can solve the problems that AI created. You just have to feed it more money. Your money, not ours.
"Microsoft, one of the companies backing the organization, said it had already found a promising model: cross-training its entry-level lawyers in different parts of the organization and equipping them with A.I. skills in order for them to be repositioned as technology evolves."
When capital tries to solve a problem, it's for the benefit of capital.
When labor solves a problem, it's for the benefit of all workers.
That is why capital's solutions always sound so dystopian: retraining/reeducation centers or programs, unemployment insurance, human testing labs...
The solution to this problem is to give real equity to the people who's knowledge they stole. Those of us who's data they've been stealing all along should be paid in real shares of equity, the same way they pay themselves. Voting shares. And then we demand they show us how this economy works in the long term.
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"training programs: so I gotta go back to college or trade school again? FER WHAT??"
animal husbandry
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That's not a bad one really. I'm too old for saturation diving or orbital work.
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arboriculture would also be not terrible.
Making a prediction ... (Score:2)
Whatever they come up with won't involve AI replacing politicians and upper management types.
Bullshit disguised as window dressing (Score:5, Informative)
...teaming up with employers to find ways to help workers gain skills or new roles and joining with educators to roll out different types of training.
Or you could just - you know - slowly deflate the AI bubble and let people continue to do the work that AI is is in the process of taking over.
Also, since the advent of AI was predicated on almost all the work done to keep society together and functioning to this point, sharing any wealth and productivity gains produced by it would seem to be a moral imperative. And no, putting on some dog-and-pony bullshit pretense of finding new roles for displaced workers is not an attempt to share the wealth. It's just a distraction - a pretense that "we really care about society, even though we're secretly pleased at the prospect of its demise and will do everything we can to make that happen".
The oligarchs want the bulk of humanity to die. They see that as the only way to slow the global warming that threatens even them, as well as the only way for them to have unfettered access to the limited food that will be available when the ecosystem collapses and the AMOC reverses. These fuckers are not our friends - don't fall for their gaslighting.
Great way to AI proof yourself (Score:2)
Get paid to fight AI
Honestly, AI is going to slow hiring, and then companies will stop hiring new positions. I don't think it's going to be an obvious "we are laying off 20% of the company due to AI being amaze-balls". Yeah yeah like 30 very large companies are laying off employees saying it's due to AI but... if you look at their public finances they're flat growth whereas S&P 500 is up 999% (or whatever, it's a lot) so they're saying what they have to say to keep their job as CEO.
My pr
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It's actually another get paid to promote AI. So don't expect them to be fighting anything.
How nice of the AI companies (Score:2)
Unholy Blasphemies (Score:1)
1. Embrace AI. For no other reason than that every useful technology, no matter how dodgy it was at first, has taken over.
2. Quality over quantity. The question is not yes/no on AI, but how to make AI work for us. I suggest manufacturing.
3. Don't be a Chinese stooge. The Chinese oppose American data centers for obvious reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
1: "Useful" is still not proven. If it stays dodgy then it stays the failure it already is.
2: Automation has been happening anyway. That's the "robots are replacing workers" thing from the past 50+ years.
3: Those imaginary boogeymen again.
At least they are trying (Score:2)
Sounds like they'll try to identify some highly physical things a person could do better than AI, and provide training for it. Nothing wrong with that. Healthcare (or at least nursing the elderly), plumbing, electrician, etc. It will be the blue-collaring of the workforce. White collar work has typically paid better, so unfortunately this will be a step down for many. As for young people, instead of university and a career as a lawyer you will be directed to a community college to learn some skill that stil
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Sounds like they'll try to identify some highly physical things a person could do better than AI, and provide training for it.
No, they'll tell you to go get your own training for it, for which you can get a nice student loan!
And then, let's say an awful lot of work does get done with less and less effort on our parts. This could mean that things become cheaper and easier to make, therefore less expensive to buy.
What it means is the number of jobs contracts and people can't afford things, and since the masses of asses think dumb shit about UBI we can't have that either, so a lot of people are going to have to die.
Re: (Score:2)
>> a lot of people are going to have to die.
You appear to be bitterly pessimistic there buddy. It's tiresome and unhelpful.
The cited article mentions several proposals for retraining. Also the coalition "has so far raised more than $500 million — about half of its multiyear goal — from companies and nonprofit groups" to help fund it. Meanwhile the average communitycollege tuition and fees for indistrict students was about $4k per year in 2025, not a very heavy debt load. This isn't necess
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You appear to be bitterly pessimistic there buddy. It's tiresome and unhelpful.
You appear to have your head in the clouds. Reality is where shit happens. Pretending otherwise is what's tiresome.
What a mess (Score:3)
I know, I know, there are many of you out there that say AI is the future. I don't believe it. In my opinion the path currently being pursued is a dead end. This is just another example of the AI bros trying to convince everyone that it's going to take over and not burst. More massive amounts of money being raised, this time for a study. The clueless governors are hoping to fill their pockets, the AI bros looking for a PR win, and the MIT person will be ignored. When will this nightmare end?
Distract the middle class (Score:2)
Johnny-come-lately (Score:2)
Where were you to help us navigate the blockchain economy? or the metaverse economy?
Navigate? To what port? (Score:2)
In the seventies and eighties, as automation was biting hard, we read endless enthralling stories about how the "Information Economy" would provide more and better jobs.
This time around, the breathless salesmen for chatbots are promising to make employees unneeded. So the jobs folks are supposed to "navigate to" are....?
Humans are terrible at long term planning (Score:2)