AI giants back non-profit to retrain workers left behind by AI

AI-POCALYPSE Several leading US AI companies joined with former US government officials on Thursday to form a bipartisan coalition focused on helping to prepare workers for the AI tsunami, even as many companies seem to be in a race to see who can replace human workers the fastest. Founded by former US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, RAISE US aims to "design and pilot new corporate incentives to retrain and redeploy workers, new approaches to support people through job transitions, and new training models tied to changing employer demand." The announcement talks up employer incentives but makes no mention of worker rights. It does, however, tease the possibility of wage insurance and career navigation "so changing jobs no longer means financial ruin." Winning political support for such benefits seems unlikely in a country where the federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25 since 2009, "is at its lowest real value in 77 years," and healthcare costs could erase the solvency protection promised by wage insurance. Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation - vendors of the AI models inspiring recent layoffs - are anchor partners in RAISE US initiative. But its corporate backing is broader still, with financial sponsorship from Bank of America and the support of more than two dozen major companies and foundations. Amazon, having sacrificed 14,000 jobs on the altar of AI transformation last fall, said, "For Amazon, joining RAISE US is a natural extension of what we have been doing for years: investing in people, partnering with governments, and building programs that help workers and communities succeed." Microsoft, which ousted about 9,000 employees last July and recently dangled buyouts before a similar number of staff, offered a similar endorsement from VP and president Brad Smith. RAISE US intends to focus on: state workforce policy and programs; employer-driven worker transition plans; worker education and re-training programs; and policy recommendations. "America has a technology strategy for leading the global AI competition," said Raimondo, who will serve as CEO of RAISE US, in a statement. "It does not yet have a people strategy - and we cannot lead without one. If we build the best AI systems in the world and leave millions of Americans behind, we won't have won anything; we'll have automated our own decline." We haven't yet automated away software developer roles, but there are signs that's happening for designers and marketers. A recent employment report from venture capital firm SignalFire notes that tech hiring is at 25 percent less than what it was before the 2019 COVID pandemic, on a 12-month trailing basis. But some jobs have fared better than others. Engineering hiring is down only 11 percent during this period at major tech companies and is up seven percent at startups. Designers have fared worse, with hiring down 48 percent at large tech companies and down 22 percent at startups. Marketing roles have declined 36 percent at large organizations and are down 18 percent at startups. And among product managers, hiring is down 39 percent at tech giants but up two percent at startups. Amid this overall retrenchment, software engineers are proportionally more in demand, accounting for 55 percent of tech hiring, compared to 46 percent seven years ago. The AI job apocalypse is most evident among new hires with less than a year of experience, and college graduates. SignalFire's data shows that in 2016, about 22 percent of new hires at major tech companies had a year or less of experience. Today, that figure is about eight percent. Among startups, where about 15 percent of new hires were inexperienced a decade ago, today that number is just three percent. "The critical systemic risk arises when an entire industry stops investing in early-career talent," SignalFire says in its report. "By eliminating its new grad pipeline to optimize current balance sheets, the tech industry could face a severe leadership vacuum over the next decade." RAISE US certainly has its work cut out for it as its members keep cutting jobs. (R)