This is an op-ed from White House National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard and Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su.
American workers are making themselves heard. But just as workers are starting to lay the foundations for a stable future, the rise of artificial intelligence is creating new uncertainty.
American workers are seeing strong wage gains beyond inflation, the longest stretch of an unemployment rate below 4% in 50 years, and historic collective bargaining agreements across the economy. Yet, opinion polls show nearly 4 in 10 Americans saying they don’t know how AI will change their jobs. One in 4 express FOBO — fear of becoming obsolete.
AI holds tremendous promise and potential peril. On the one hand, AI can improve medical diagnoses, make work less burdensome, and increase productivity for workers and companies. On the other, it threatens to exacerbate bias, erode job quality, and displace workers. For example, the use of AI to inform hiring, promotion, or disciplinary decisions, without meaningful oversight, can replicate bias embedded in the data on which it is trained. Similarly, algorithmic management tools that monitor worker performance or allocate work tasks may create risks of injury. And the massive amounts of data these technological tools use can violate workers’ privacy or jeopardize their ability to organize unions.
President Biden has stated his commitment to the safe and responsible development of AI and to both fostering innovation and protecting workers. Simply put, AI is neither safe nor responsible unless it does right by workers. The role of AI in our lives will be the determined by choices that we make as a society and industry, labor, workers, and government all have a role to play.
As the most pro-union, pro-worker president in history, President Biden has made clear that workers must have a seat at the table as AI is designed and deployed. And, as we just marked the 90-day anniversary of the president’s executive order on the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence, this becomes more imperative.
Labor and industry are already finding win-win solutions that nurture creativity and innovation while safeguarding workers’ livelihoods. In September, the 20,000 screenwriters of the Writers Guild of America struck a historic collective bargaining agreement, their first ever to address AI. The agreement ensures that writers alone receive writing credits and prevents studios from using AI for scriptwriting — while giving writers the choice to use AI as a tool to support their creative work. Similarly, rail workers have negotiated to ensure that workers oversee any AI-enabled technologies used to scan railway cars. Culinary workers in Las Vegas secured commitments of advance notice before new technologies, including robotics, are deployed in the workplace.
Modern collective bargaining agreements like these underscore the vital role of unions in building and fortifying the middle class, now and in the future. They also provide positive, replicable models for the broader labor market; whether a union exists or not, industry and labor can establish formal mechanisms to incorporate workers’ perspectives into AI development and deployment, equip workers with the digital literacy necessary to adapt to an AI-enabled work, and advocate collectively for worker-centric policies. This is exactly what Microsoft has recently done in a newly announced partnership with the AFL-CIO. Importantly, Microsoft has also pledged to maintain neutrality in any future organizing efforts.
The Biden Administration is committed to doing its part. This includes embedding worker protections in rules for key grant programs and continuing to promote high-quality jobs and the right to organize through the Department of Labor’s Good Jobs Initiative.
The Department of Labor is also creating a set of principles for the responsible, worker-centric use of AI. These principles will prescribe vital safeguards, such as transparency in the use of AI, careful pre-deployment testing of AI systems, appropriate and meaningful human review of their outputs, and privacy-enhancing technologies. Additionally, the National Science Foundation is investing in critical research around privacy-preserving techniques, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already released guidance to ensure the use of AI aligns with civil rights laws.
We are going further to ensure workers thrive in an AI-powered economy, and can take advantage of benefits that this technology might bring, by supporting inclusive training programs that help all workers access jobs created or changed by AI. The administration is also preparing detailed policy recommendations to protect and support workers against potential AI-related job displacement. After decades of rising income inequality and communities of workers being left behind in previous periods of technological advancements, we need to ensure that any economic windfalls from AI do not come at the expense of displaced workers. Instead, reinvesting gains from AI in workers will help us secure stronger economic growth for decades to come.
AI has already proven to be a powerful new technology, but its productive use for the benefit of all of society depends upon us. Employers, industry, and government should only be advancing AI that works for workers because that’s the only way AI works for America.
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