▶ 0:15:40Chair Banks: The subcommittee on employment and workforce safety -- workplace safety will come to order. First, it is an honor and a privilege to lead the subcommittee for a few months. I plan to examine the challenges that american workers face in exploring policy solutions to increase opportunity, promote fairness, and support families.
▶ 0:16:05Chair Banks: I appreciate being able to work with you, ranking member hickenlooper, and I intend to be very active in the time we have left leading the subcommittee together. Before I go any further, I ask unanimous consent for senator blunt rochester to be waved onto the subcommittee for the purpose of today's hearing. Without objection. So moved. I want to welcome our witnesses this afternoon.
▶ 0:16:32Chair Banks: We have a distinguished panel of artificial intelligence researchers and workforce development leaders to put the impact of ai on the workforce into perspective. According to goldman sachs, ai will drive $7 trillion of worldwide investment in economic activity over the next decade. The $7 trillion question is, who benefits from that? But it is not a question for the future.
▶ 0:17:01Chair Banks: Employers, workers, and governments are exploring that answer right now. Ai permits is to raise productivity and reshape the work. It can also disrupt how the workforce in the workplace is organized and create a whole lot of anxiety. There is no shortage of doom and gloom predictions about mass displacement of workers. We have to take that seriously. But we have not seen it begin to happen yet.
▶ 0:17:29Chair Banks: Based on all the evidence, three things seem to be happening so far. First, hiring of entry-level workers is somewhat weaker. Second, ai is transforming tasks rather than replacing jobs. And third, the skills that employers need and how workers learn those skills is rapidly changing. The downturn in entry-level hiring is due to several factors. Ai is just one of them.
▶ 0:17:58Chair Banks: Some researchers believe the federal reserve is partly responsible. I look forward to delving into that today. Even in the most ai excluded occupations, we have not seen much change in employment. But the way workers reallocate their time is changing. In some occupations, things like data entry and simple coding are already mostly automated. But checking ai output is a whole new discipline.
▶ 0:18:27Chair Banks: Finally, when we consider how workers acquire and use skills, we have to think about employment pipelines. A lot of workforce training happens on the job. Entry-level workers are not just hired to do their jobs. They are hired to gain experience and grow into more advanced jobs. Every master craftsman was once an apprentice. Every doctor started out as a resident.
▶ 0:18:53Chair Banks: And most of our staffers in our offices started out as interns. The real challenge is for graduates and young workers to acquire the skills they need to enter the workforce and get on the first rung of their career ladders. If those opportunities dry up, some of our young workers can't access them. It will be a big problem in the labor market over the long-term.
▶ 0:19:20Chair Banks: Helping workers master the skills they need to succeed in the ai economy starts with getting better at it. Existing labor statistics too often failed to tell us how occupations tasks are changing, what skills are needed, which jobs will grow and shrink, and how workers move through the labor force because of ai.
▶ 0:19:42Chair Banks: That is why, that is exactly why I introduced the ai workforce act with senator hickenlooper, senator husted, and senator hassan. The census and bureau of labor statistics need more expertise to analyze and forecast ai's impacts. They need to share more data with state and local governments and collaborate with private researchers.
▶ 0:20:08Chair Banks: Billions of dollars of spending on workforce development programs rely on good data. But better data is not a goal itself. We need to make better decisions to beat china in the ai race. We need to train and equip american workers in nearly every industry to compete and win in the ai economy. We also need to make sure small and medium-sized businesses don't get left behind while the biggest companies sprint ahead.
▶ 0:20:39Chair Banks: America will win the ai race with china by maximizing capabilities of all of our companies and all of our workers. I look forward to hearing our witnesses's perspectives on how we can accomplish that. But before we do, I want to recognize the ranking member, senator hickenlooper, for his opening statement.
▶ 0:20:57Sen. Hickenlooper: Thank you, chairman banks. Thank you for holding this hearing. I want to thank our panel for making time to be here to provide testimony. Throughout human history, the world has experienced industrial revolutions that changed every sector of our economy. The first industrial revolution driven by steam power, second by electricity and mass production, and third by electronics.
▶ 0:21:26Sen. Hickenlooper: Through it all, we see hard-working people striving to achieve the best for themselves and the best for their communities. Every technological development has provided tools for these workers, these strivers to achieve even more in a telegraph to the assembly line. We are currently witnessing what some are calling a fourth industrial revolution. Technological advances in artificial intelligence and automation are changing how we create, how we communicate, how we work, and how we live.
▶ 0:21:57Sen. Hickenlooper: These new tools like the ones that came before come with great power, but also great responsibility. Small, medium, and large organizations alike are feeling the transfer motive effects of ai. There is an ever-growing crop of ai assistants claiming they are ready to help you revolutionize your house or your business. Today's businesses wonder, how do I know which tools are worth our investment and which ones overpromise and under deliver?
▶ 0:22:26Sen. Hickenlooper: Our government's all want to make use of these new technologies. Ai tools were about to streamline and accelerate the permitting review process and cortical infrastructure. Health and human services used ai to identify polio outbreaks. The colorado deployment is using it for customer experience. But no one feels this revolution more acutely than our workers.
▶ 0:22:56Sen. Hickenlooper: Today's worker must navigate a dizzying maze of systems that are increasingly automated. Job applications, interviews, human resource systems, each of these entry-level roles are shifting and often driven by ai. New ai driven tools are being implemented across sectors with oftentimes little to no training on how to use them.
▶ 0:23:23Sen. Hickenlooper: We need to ensure that workers are getting the training they need at every level whether they are searching for their first job or transitioning to a new role in the same field or looking to switch industries altogether. Today's workers have got to ask themselves, how am I going to keep up? Or even better, strive and thrive in this ai ecosystem. That is what is driving this hearing today.
▶ 0:23:50Sen. Hickenlooper: We see ai impacting the workforce in all these different ways. We need to work together on making sure we get the right path forward. How do we help employers, educators, and workers prepare for what is next? We envision a fully connected ecosystem where all these entities are communicating with each other, among each other by sharing proven practices, forecasting needs by developing strategies for overcoming these obstacles together.
▶ 0:24:22Sen. Hickenlooper: We are working on a bill to encourage just that. Our bill brings together regional partnerships and educators, industry intermediaries to provide credentials, apprenticeships, other jobs and training that use ai.
▶ 0:24:40Sen. Hickenlooper: Because who knows better than workers and the businesses and educators in a region -- in any given region than the workers, businesses, and educators in that region?
▶ 0:24:54Sen. Hickenlooper: I am also working on a bill with chairman banks with senators hassan and husted which would direct the department of labor to gather and analyze data to better inform us how exactly ai is impacting the labor market, labor market. Informed policy starts with good data. We cannot say that often enough. Too often we don't see it in this building. This work will provide essential insights into job transitions among layoffs, and future worker needs.
▶ 0:25:26Sen. Hickenlooper: This is a monday mental task ahead of us in this fourth industrial revolution. Capabilities of current technology are rubbing on previous generations. 's wildest dreams. We are confident that with the guidance provided by people like all of our witnesses here today, we can forge a path in the right direction. We need to look at what the research is telling us about how the workforce is shifting and how we can accommodate that and give them a leg up.
▶ 0:25:55Sen. Hickenlooper: We need to partner with folks on the ground in our states who are innovating ai with workers and employers. We need to shape worker forward policies to set striving americans up for success. This is a moment in history when everyone's effort matters.
▶ 0:26:16Sen. Hickenlooper: The decisions we make now will ensure any child born today continues to have the highest probability of a healthy and happy life of any person born in the history of mankind. Thank you all for your testimony and for taking part in our hearing today. I yield back to the chair.
▶ 0:26:33Chair Banks: Thank you, ranking member he can loop or. I would now like to welcome our first and only panel. First, we have Mr. clark, the president and ceo of employeeindy in marion county, indiana. Mr. clark brings an impressive combination of expertise and workforce development, technology, and public administration. Mr. clark, you are not recognized for five minutes to deliver opening remarks.
▶ 0:27:03Mr. Clark: Thank you, chairman banks, senator hickenlooper, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I serve as president and ceo of employeeindy, a workforce development board serving indianapolis in marion county and indiana. Every day we work with employers trying to fill jobs. Educators preparing students for careers and jobseekers navigating and changing labor market. That gives us a practical view of how artificial intelligence is changing work today.
▶ 0:27:35Mr. Clark: I have had the opportunity to see artificial intelligence from two very different perspectives in my career. Before leading employeeindy, I work for the city of indianapolis, one of the nation's larger cities, helping all three branches of government implement new technology, managing a 7000 employee workforce. Today, I lead our region's workforce development board on helping employers find talent and workers prepare for the future of work.
▶ 0:28:03Mr. Clark: In my current role, I have the opportunity to see how technologies affect employers trying to fill jobs and workers trying to build careers. Those two perspectives have shaped one fundamental belief. Artificial intelligence is not primarily a technology story. It is a workforce story first. Because technology has never been america's competitive advantage by itself, our workforce has. That belief has led me to three conclusions. I will briefly outline those for you.
▶ 0:28:34Mr. Clark: First, ai is reshaping far more jobs than it is replacing. Much of the public and precision has focused on mass unemployment that is not what our employers are telling us. Artificial intelligence is becoming another workplace tool much like the internet and email. It is changing how work is performed, not eliminating the need for people to perform it. When the new iu health hospital being built now in indianapolis opens, ai will help summarize patient information for clinical review for a nurse.
▶ 0:29:05Mr. Clark: The goal is not to replace nurses. We need more nurses. Very clearly. It is to give them more time with patients and less time in front of a computer. This is ai augmenting workers, not replacing them. Second, I believe the greatest long-term workforce risk is not widespread unemployment. It is the destruction of career pathways that workers rely on to gain experience and continually develop new skills throughout their careers. Every experienced professional was once an entry-level employee.
▶ 0:29:35Mr. Clark: Today's junior software developer becomes tomorrow's senior engineer. Today's apprentice comes tomorrow's master trades person. Not to steal from you, chairman. If artificial intelligence significantly reduces opportunities for workers to gain those early career experiences, we don't simply lose entry-level jobs. We weaken the talent pipeline employers depend upon to develop tomorrow's workforce.
▶ 0:29:59Mr. Clark: Preparing workers for naia economy means preserving career corrected learning, internships, partnerships or other pathways to develop judgment, communication, human skills that ai cannot replace. Increasingly, employers are looking for workers who can work alongside ai, evaluate ai generated information, exercise judgment that only people can provide. That means it is not just about a pathway to the workforce.
▶ 0:30:25Mr. Clark: It is about helping today's workforce continuously learn and adapt as occupations will evolve. And my third conclusion, local workforce boards will play a critical role in helping communities adapt. Every regional economy is different with different industries and different talent. And so that is our own dna within each region. The ai challenge is facing advanced manufacturing with health care. Health care is different from logistics. Logistics is different from hospitality.
▶ 0:30:56Mr. Clark: That means workforce solutions must also be very -- workforce board sit at the intercession of employers, educators, economic develop income and training. We translate employer demand into training strategies, national trends into local action, and emerging technologies into practical workforce solutions. Local workforce boards are only as effective as the information they have, and that is why we support the ai workforce prepare act. Winning the ai race is not just about building better technology.
▶ 0:31:25Mr. Clark: It is about building a workforce that is ready to use it. Preparing for ai begins with understanding how it is changing work, better labor market intelligence forecasting, and workforce data will help communities prepare workers before destruction comes replacement. America has never succeeded by fueling technological change. We have succeeded by harnessing it. Artificial intelligence will not determine the future of work. People will.
▶ 0:31:54Mr. Clark: If we equip employers, educators, workforce organizations, and workers with better information and tools, ai can strengthen america's workforce rather than weaken it. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:32:04Chair Banks: Thank you for that. Next, we have missed rogers, the director of the indiana business research center at the greatest university in america and the returning national champions, indiana university's kelley school of business. Mr. rogers is an expert at making complex data useful for real-world decisions.
▶ 0:32:30Chair Banks: She serves on boards of several national organizations focused on economic research and labor market information. Miss rogers. , not recognized for five but it's for your opening statement. Thank you somuch.
▶ 0:32:48Ms. Rogers: Thank you so much. It is a beautiful day out there so thank you for being here and listening to us. I was actually thrilled to have this opportunity to testify today on the impact of ai on the workforce. It is a real issue. There are some knowns, many more unknowns. Some unknown knowns and we can go on. But I would have to remember the movie that came from.
▶ 0:33:19Ms. Rogers: I do come here as a subject matter from that university in indiana, but my views don't necessarily reflect those of my employer, the university. So I want to just make that clear.
▶ 0:33:39Ms. Rogers: As director of the center, and thank you so much for giving those remarks about my experience, chairman banks, because I can cut out a little bit on describing why I'm here. But certainly the thing we have been doing since 1925 when the university trustees of indiana university created our center was to help people in indiana
▶ 0:34:10Ms. Rogers: Understand our population, our economies, our workforces, and I say plural because we have many, to provide them with evidence-based data and research. So, getting onto the impact on the workforce, generative and agent to k.I.a., I like to kind of differentiate a little bit. Ai generically is many things.
▶ 0:34:36Ms. Rogers: But certainly, those two have evolved very quickly in the four years since chatgpt's public release to the world. Nearly 20% of U.S. firms today, actually not today, it was february 19 and a survey by the U.S. census bureau, nearly 20% report using ai in some business function.
▶ 0:35:05Ms. Rogers: Harvard's project on workforce has surveys looking at the uptake of ai, particularly generative ai. They are finding that 62% of adults between the ages of 18 to 64, which is kind of our prime training and education workforce are using generative ai and workers in that population are
▶ 0:35:36Ms. Rogers: Reporting spending about 6.5% of their work hours a week using it. That is kind of hard information. It is useful information. We like to see more like that. My center recently published findings comparing high and low ai exposed occupations in our state, meaning they have tasks in those jobs that some
▶ 0:36:06Ms. Rogers: Proportion of them could be done by a genic ai. So when we say exposed, in some ways you can say they are exposed to the risk of ai, and another way you can look at it as exposed to an opportunity with ai. Like many accommodations, I talked with one hand and say on the other hand so you will have to forgive me, but we see both.
▶ 0:36:37Ms. Rogers: Notably, we found that job postings in those exposed occupations actually shrank. Postings for ai exposed jobs. Any of those shrank since 2022. Verses 35% decline in those less exposed, the jobs that require human touch as opposed to artificial touch.
▶ 0:37:06Ms. Rogers: Wages in those exposed occupations grew faster, but at the same time, those jobs lost their employment advantage. Think about some of the things we have seen over the last several months about college graduates not finding employment as quickly as they used to.
▶ 0:37:29Ms. Rogers: Think about jobs or occupations that people have where they don't have that 2% or 3% below unemployment that we used to have. People with bachelors degrees, masters degrees. However, taking this together, but I described, it is not enough.
▶ 0:37:53Ms. Rogers: Taking in together, it looks more like mass job elimination -- it looks less like mass job in the mission, more like market-based pricing and relocation. This bill matters.
▶ 0:38:09Ms. Rogers: I am running out of time so I want to say very clearly that I support the bill and its goal to collect data, to have better data, and my plea is we create standards for the definition so we compare apples to apples. Oh, I actually have 45 more seconds here? Ok. Thank you very much.
▶ 0:38:33Chair Banks: Thank you very much. Next, we have Dr. palagashvili. I practiced that all week and probably still messed it up. Senior research fellow and director of the labor policy project at the mercatus center at george mason university. She is a labor economist's research focuses on independent workers and how labor markets evolve. Thank you for being with us, doctor.
▶ 0:39:03Chair Banks: You have five minutes for your opening remarks.
▶ 0:39:09Dr. Palagashvili: It is an honor to testify before you. I am a labor economist and director of the labor policy project at the mercatus center at george mason university where we examine the changing nature of work and how policy can build a resilient labor market. Let me start with the most fundamental point. The early evidence does not yet show brought ai driven employment laws.
▶ 0:39:37Dr. Palagashvili: Economists think of jobs as a bundle of tasks. So automating one task does not mean the whole job disappears. Ai can automate some tasks, augment others, raise productivity, and change how firms organize production. Recent studies find little noticeable change in employment, unemployment, earnings, or hours at ai adopting workplaces.
▶ 0:40:01Dr. Palagashvili: According to a census bureau survey, about 95% of ai using firms report no change in total employment. That does not mean nothing is happening. It means the adjustment is more complicated than a simple story of mass displacement. The clearest evidence of potential concern is concentrated among young workers entering highly exposed occupations. Recent research finds employment declining for young workers in the most ai exposed fields without a matching rise in unemployment.
▶ 0:40:32Dr. Palagashvili: The pattern were consistent with slower hiring than with layoffs. This can be a serious concern. However, the evidence is still mixed. According to research from the economic innovation group, hiring and many highly exposed occupations actually began declining in the spring of 2022, so six to eight months before chatgpt even existed. Employment outcomes have also weakened among young workers with little ai exposure at all, including teenagers working mostly in foodservice and retail.
▶ 0:41:03Dr. Palagashvili: The broader pattern works to macroeconomic factors as much as ai. So the right conclusion is not that ai is irrelevant. It is that the picture is still mixed into the extent employment effects exist so far, they look like a slower hiring pipeline for younger workers not layoffs. This brings me to my second main point about measurement. Federal labor market statistics are valuable, but they were built for an earlier economy.
▶ 0:41:33Dr. Palagashvili: Household surveys can tell us whether someone is employed and what occupation they hold, but not how ai is changing tasks within the job. Business surveys can tell us whether a firm reports using ai and in some cases whether it says ai effort did employment but those responses are still too coarse and not routinely linked to hiring, separations, earnings, or occupational compensation. Even the basic adoption rate depends heavily on how the question was worded.
▶ 0:42:01Dr. Palagashvili: For example when the census bureau broadened one survey's ai question last november, reviews jump from 10% to 17% overnight. That was a change in measurement, not a month of sudden economic transformation. The ai workforce prepare act as a constructive response to that problem. It adds ai questions to several major federal surveys and creates a voluntary channel for ai developers to share adoption data with statistical agencies.
▶ 0:42:30Dr. Palagashvili: As congress considers further reforms, I would emphasize three things in particular on measurement. One, linking business surveys's answers to actual hiring and weight outcomes so we can compare ai using and non-ai using firms directly. Two, adding occupational detail to wage records that nearly every employer already reports so we can see which jobs are growing or shrinking. And third, building a new time a measure of building a solo independent business activity.
▶ 0:43:01Dr. Palagashvili: The last point matters because of what my own research has found. Since early 20 to four, new business applications with no signs of near-term hiring habits and 27% and ai exposed sectors while staying flat in less exposed ai less exposed sectors. Up 20% in the most ai exposed occupations, unchanged in the least exposed.
▶ 0:43:29Dr. Palagashvili: These are descriptive, not causal, but they suggest that in some knowledge intense field, ai may be lowering the cost of working independently rather than employment overall. This makes sense. If ai helps you do what once required a team, you may decide to go out on your own rather than needing an employer to provide that team for you. To summarize, the evidence does not yet show brought job loss. Our data systems cannot fully see what is happening.
▶ 0:43:58Dr. Palagashvili: Independent work is growing in ways that matter for labor policy. Let me conclude by saying the central challenge is not to predictive pred the pred t predictor single labor market future. For the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:44:13Chair Banks: Thank you. I would like to yield to ranking member hickenlooper to introduce our next two guests.
▶ 0:44:20Sen. Hickenlooper: Thank you, Mr. chair. First, let me introduce Mr. jonathan liebert. He is joining us today from colorado springs. He serves as ceo of the better business bureau of southern colorado. I think also working as the acting ceo of the whole statewide bus better business bureau.
▶ 0:44:44Sen. Hickenlooper: He created the bbb ai hub to increase ai literacy and capability as well as governance and responsible use. Dr. justin heck is the senior director of research and data production at opportunity@work, a national nonprofit building a skills first labor market. Dr. heck spent over a decade developing quantitative research at the intersection of labor market analysis and public policy. Thank you both for being here and participating.
▶ 0:45:14Chair Banks: Mr. liebert, you are recognized for five minutes.
▶ 0:45:17Mr. Liebert: Thank you. Thank you, members of the subcommittee. Appreciate the opportunity to testify today on the impact of artificial intelligence on america's workforce. Again, my name is jonathan liebert and I am the ceo of the better business bureau of southern colorado. I am part of my local workforce board as well. My perspective on artificial intelligence is neither pro ai nor anti-ai. I am cautiously optimistic.
▶ 0:45:46Mr. Liebert: I have seen in ways it can absolutely magnify which would become a strength and small businesses, expand access to expertise. I have seen it help workers become more capable. I have also seen people can enter in sensitive information into these public systems, accept fabricant information as fact, and purchase products marked as ai powered without understanding truly what that technology does.
▶ 0:46:09Mr. Liebert: Since 2025, I trained over 5500 business owners, employers, educators, nonprofit leaders in colorado and other parts of the country. Talking to them about how ai needs to be used ethically, responsibly, and practically. This experience has given me a front row seat to what is going on inside the workforce. I am there to see the excitement, the fear, and a lot of misinformation surrounding this technology.
▶ 0:46:37Mr. Liebert: Business owners really want to know which tools are a credible source of information for them to be able to use safely, and they want to make sure they are doing things wisely and not putting their customers at rest. Nonprofit leaders want to know how they can expand their impact and limited staff resources and level of organizations. Educators want to know what to prepare students for and knowing that jobs are changing fast, employers are looking for different things than what they should put into curriculum. Workers want to know whether ai will replace them, and they want to know what will help them become more valuable workers to the workforce system.
▶ 0:47:08Mr. Liebert: So I have learned is fear often decreases people receive practical education. The good is problem I see is not the people are refusing to use ai at the moment. It is often that they trust it too quickly. So I told the folks I teach ai is not an oracle. Ai is an ideation engine that gives you the ability to create these templates and information come of it you have to keep the human in the loop and doubled everything. An oracle is an answer to be believed.
▶ 0:47:34Mr. Liebert: Ai ideation generates assumptions and you should challenge the assumptions. The human must remain responsible for verifying the output, adding additional context, and absolutely making the final decision of how it is implement. At the bbb, we closed the gap between the speed of technological change and the ability of people and organizations to respond quickly.
▶ 0:48:01Mr. Liebert: Bbb is interested that making trust and ethics are applied when using this technology and again it again we are interested in marketplace trust. When they don't trust one another because of the way the technology is being used, that has economic and petitions for all of us. In collaboration with our full workforce center, the board's chamber of commerce and partners created the ai hub to focus on a couple different priorities. One is ai literacy.
▶ 0:48:31Mr. Liebert: The second is workforce preparation. Ai governance and absolutely market place trust. Ai trust means learning more than how to use a simple chatbot forgetting is understanding what ai can and cannot do, how to protect sensitive information, how to recognize misinformation and bias, and more specifically come when the human oversight is required. Ai governance means establishing clear roles before problems occur.
▶ 0:48:57Mr. Liebert: Organizations should have robust policies and determine which tools should be used by their teams and develop robust ai literacy plans to help them keep up with these very quickly changing systems. One of the largest issues that ai has is that most people cannot conceptualize how to use it since it is moving so quickly. Additionally, we all need to get used to the fact that how we work is changing and we need to learn how to review ai generated work in a productive way. We must still think critically as we engage with ai and remain accountable for when ai affects important decisions.
▶ 0:49:28Mr. Liebert: Market place trust is also extremely essential. Small business owners and nonprofit are being approached bya growing number of companies and consultants that are saying they have these ai powered claims that can fix these things. Most smaller organizations do not have legal teams or cybersecurity experts or technology procure my departments so they need practical guidance on how to evaluate vendors, how to update their data practices, how to look into these performance claims, and look at security contract terms and human account ability.
▶ 0:49:58Mr. Liebert: The workforce is changing and in many cases ai will help individuals automate these tasks and do jobs they never could before. But again, we have to be careful we are not fully automating people out of the first rung of this career ladder and then wonder why workers cannot reach the second. So again, I think congress can help by doing a lot of practical and interesting, obviously enacting different types of acts that will help create more data and information for all of us to use. And again I would say this, that america does not need to choose between innovation and responsibility.
▶ 0:50:27Mr. Liebert: It can pursue both at the same time. In the future, the work will not be predetermined by an out with them. It will be shaped by all of us and the choices we make as we need our workers to an educated system where we protect, make sure people have access to tools, and make sure we hold businesses and consumers accountable. So again, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:50:47Chair Banks: Dr. heck.
▶ 0:50:50Dr. Heck: Chairman banks, ranking member hickenlooper, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is justin heck, and id research and data production -- and I lead research and data production at opportunity@work. Public debate about ai and work has focused almost entirely on whether jobs will be augmented or automated. Far less attention has gone to how ai will reshape economic mobility. That is what I want to talk about today.
▶ 0:51:25Dr. Heck: Workers build skills in one job and use them in the next. In aggregate, these moves form pathways. We analyzed 130 million job transitions over 10 years and found three kinds of jobs, entry-level origin jobs, higher wage destination jobs, and in between, the steppingstones we call gateway jobs.
▶ 0:51:46Dr. Heck: 60 million americans work in gateway jobs and 62% of them are stars, workers skilled through alternative routes who build their skills to work, military service, partnerships, training programs, or committee programs rather than a bachelors degree. Consider a customer service representative. Workers reach that top from roles like receptionist or cashier.
▶ 0:52:09Dr. Heck: On the job, handling frustrated customers, finding solutions under pressure, they build critical thinking, speaking, and persuasion that prepare them for the better paying hr or sales job that comes next. Ai can break that steppingstone function in two key ways. The first is straightforward. There may be fewer of these jobs. Among the 10 largest occupations with high ai test exposure, half are gateway roles.
▶ 0:52:34Dr. Heck: The bureau's labor statistics projects declining demand for both. A cashier or receptionist loses the next rung up and employers may find fewer workers to move up into management or senior roles. The second is less obvious and may matter more. Ai can hollow out a gateway job from the inside by illuminating what a worker learns from doing it.
▶ 0:53:00Dr. Heck: If that customer service rep spends their time overseeing a chatbot rather than handling the hard calls together they lose the opportunity to develop the skills that would have carried them to the next rung. The learning that happens on the job often happens through the hard parts. Ai is exceptionally good at removing the hard parts. This can happen without anybody deciding to do it. Learning has historically been the byproduct of getting work done but not the objective.
▶ 0:53:29Dr. Heck: A company that automates the demanding parts of jobs may see short-term efficiency gains while inadvertently dismantling the pipeline that produces its own future supervisors and managers. Displacement debates miss this. A worker whose job is eliminated knows it immediately. A worker who is learning has been quietly removed from the job may not be removed for years until they apply to the next job and discover they no longer qualify. But of this is inevitable.
▶ 0:53:58Dr. Heck: Ai cannot augment work rather than hollow it out but whether ai narrows pathways or strengthens them pence on how the technology is deployed and on the choices before the subcommittee. Congress can act in three ways. First, build a skills-based labor market. When pathways get disrupted, workers need their capabilities recognized wherever those capabilities are built. Federal jobs for stars act would embed skills based hiring and federal employment while the contracting act would do the same for federal contractors.
▶ 0:54:30Dr. Heck: Second, treat investment and workers the way we treat investment in machines. Employees can write off an ai system or server than the technology. If we want employers to choose augmentation, we should not tell them the machine is that you permit. Third, find what works and measure what is actually happening.
▶ 0:54:53Dr. Heck: The better jobs through evidence and innovation act would fund programs, give the system we already have the resources we need to meet this moment, and the ai workforce prepare act is a meaningful step for the data we need, including data to see how ai is reshaping jobs and the pathways that run through them. I will close with this. Ai presents enormous opportunities. But as it reshapes jobs, it will reshape the skills that workers build and the pathways available to them.
▶ 0:55:23Dr. Heck: If we do this without intention, we lose more than jobs. We lose the routes people use to move up and the talent employers need at the other end. That is a choice, not a forecast. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:55:34Chair Banks: Thank you to each of you. Good opening statements. We will now move on to questions. I retained my time for later and will yield five minutes for questions to senator marshall.
▶ 0:55:45Sen. Marshall: Thank you, chairman. I will let you all answer the same question here. I am looking for 30 to 45 second answers so you all can do it. Let's just assume that there is a significant number of people, probably data entry tech people that will lose their jobs to ai, and they will be to go back and get some more training. They already got a bachelors degree, right?
▶ 0:56:10Sen. Marshall: What advice would you have for community colleges, technical colleges to help quickly retrain these people and pivot back in? Mr. clark, going to start with you. Two or three things you think would be helpful. Maybe there is something uss why we should not do it is ok with me as well.
▶ 0:56:27Mr. Clark: Thank you, senator. Happy to answer. For community college, the key is workforce will be a part of the answer. We have the opportunity for our community college to be able to scale up. That will be a big part. University, the committee college has to respond with the right training, so they are still working on that, but that would be my number one.
▶ 0:56:55Sen. Marshall: Great. Great answer too, by the way. Miss rogers.
▶ 0:57:02Ms. Rogers: Thank you, senator. Good question. How do we retrain them when they have been displaced? Over the past 50 to 75 years, congress has enacted significant legislation to help displaced workers find jobs. I am glad that we are going to be looking at that again, and I would argue that each state already has employment projections.
▶ 0:57:31Ms. Rogers: Part of the bill is to enhance those projections. I am one of the people that argues we can enhance it with more information around wage records. But I would encourage people in my state for example to look to the state of indiana's already existing top jobs platform that helps show people within regions close to where they live which jobs are in highest demand and
▶ 0:58:03Ms. Rogers: Have high wage but we set it up and there is a group of people who worked on this so that you can ratchet it based on the cap abilities of the person the right? So they may only have a high school degree. And then work with them to increase it.
▶ 0:58:23Sen. Marshall: Thank you. Doctor, go ahead. I am not even going to try your last name.
▶ 0:58:29Dr. Palagashvili: Don't worry. I will mention what michael panelists mentioned which was in my written testimony. There are interesting overlooked low hanging fruit solution reform which is congress can restore tax neutrality between investing in machines and investing in people.
▶ 0:58:50Dr. Palagashvili: Since the tax code currently makes it easy to deduct the cost of automation to commit or capital investment, that is easier to dock than training the workers to use that increment or capital. I think that is one way we help incentivize firms in a market wa based solution way.
▶ 0:59:13Chair Banks: Thank you.
▶ 0:59:15Mr. Liebert: Thank you, senator. I agree with much that has been said and will add a couple things that have not been set. You bring up a good question because utilizing the existing infrastructure that is already in place is absolutely critical. Utilizing the community college system, any of those organizations that are already there. I think in order to talk about this whole thing that is already in place with the re-skilling, upskilling, certification credentialing, different pathways. Understanding which pathway they are going to and which tasks they need to be taught is key.
▶ 0:59:49Mr. Liebert: Making sure we are doing the training. It is necessary to make sure we are getting it in the hands of the teachers, educators, the skills they need to have these conversations with the students, and also making sure there is good correlation and connection between colleges, universities, as well as the business community to make sure we are accessing the skills. This stuff changes so fast.
▶ 1:00:11Mr. Liebert: One of the partnerships we are working on now with the better business bureau and the system of colorado is making sure we are aligned with the classes they have and coming to the bbb ai hub for the quick hit lessons where we are able to be more quicken fluid, but we are partnering together to make sure we provide good, necessary, ever-changing skills to folks in colorado.
▶ 1:00:32Sen. Marshall: Great. Dr. heck, a brief answer, please. Sorry.
▶ 1:00:37Dr. Heck: No worries. We need to work on the skills that workers have. We need to take seriously the demand expertise they already have and make sure we bring employers to the table so we know we are training workers for jobs that exist.
▶ 1:00:52Sen. Marshall: A quick question for the chairman and ranking member to contemplate. They tell me we are going to lose a lot of entry-level positions. How do you get experience to accountants if we fire the entry-level accountants? Interested that we keep pursuing that answer too.
▶ 1:01:13Chair Banks: Thank you. Ranking member hickenlooper.
▶ 1:01:17Sen. Hickenlooper: I will maintain my place and the yield to senator baldwin.
▶ 1:01:22Sen. Baldwin: Thank you. If I get to it, I have a similar question to the one you just posed to the panelists, but I have one first. Wisconsin is all too familiar with the disruption that comes when washington makes the wrong decision or fails to plan ahead. As we consider policy regulation on ai, we have a response ability to working men and women to get this right.
▶ 1:01:53Sen. Baldwin: Something we have heard today as we must have access to the best data to understand how ai is changing the workplace and impacting workers. Dr. heck, and I think I want to ask miss rogers the same question. Thank you for being here today. One of the things you alluded to in your testimony is improving data collection. What gaps exist in our current data, and what should we be doing differently to better measure and more precisely measure ai's impact on workers?
▶ 1:02:25Sen. Baldwin: Start with Dr. heck.
▶ 1:02:26Dr. Heck: Thank you so much for the question. I think the panel has already brought up a lot of good examples on how we can improve our data systems. I like two in particular. The first is thinking about how workers are actually moving between jobs. Much of that data we only see two to three years after it occurs. We need current indicators to see these moves and how their jobs are changing, whether they are spending time on how ai is coming into the picture.
▶ 1:02:55Dr. Heck: I would also add that linking to existing systems is a good solution. When we can buy the great data at the states, how can we take that data and connect it in ways that it is more useful for everyone? Thank you.
▶ 1:03:07Sen. Baldwin: Thank you. Miss rogers?
▶ 1:03:13Ms. Rogers: They really have stood out to be in working toward understanding the bill. First are occupational classification, our definitional structure. Really don't accommodate understanding what the job is. You cannot just say it is an ai job or it has ai used in it.
▶ 1:03:37Ms. Rogers: We need to work on that and come up with definitions that are already out there among many institutions, certainly academic institutions, but also companies themselves like meta and facebook and amazon. How are they defining the use of ai in their jobs?
▶ 1:04:00Ms. Rogers: Second, to echo your point about this, states already hold valuable data about workers as well as students, and we have those datalink through state longitudinal system, sls as some of us call it.
▶ 1:04:21Ms. Rogers: Third, we need to figure out what the firms themselves are doing in adopting ai, governing ai, implementing it into different portions of the firm. It is not a one-size-fits-all situation. I think it is important for us to know how they are allocating work based on how they are implementing ai.
▶ 1:04:45Sen. Baldwin: I'm going to jump here. Mr. liebert, and your testimony, you touched on how people can use ai as a crutch to replace critical thinking. While ai can be used as a tool to enhance our productivity, we have to ensure that workers are still given the opportunities to learn and gain their relevant skills needed to advance in their careers.
▶ 1:05:13Sen. Baldwin: For instance, if ai replaces all entry-level programmer jobs, how will those displaced human beings be ready for mid-level positions? Several of you have touched upon that. Let me start with you, Mr. liebert.
▶ 1:05:31Sen. Baldwin: As employers adopt ai tools, what steps should they take to ensure this technology complements their workforce rather than displaces workers and that employees have opportunities to develop new skills on the job?
▶ 1:05:45Mr. Liebert: Thank you for this question. I think this is really important. This is something I hear a lot. You probably do as well. Will ai dumb these things down for folks? What I see is this is a choice. There are people out there that use ai as a cognitive crutch that will do what I call hollow intelligence. They will use ai and don't know what it means and will put it out in the world and when I challenged don't know what it means. That is a problem.
▶ 1:06:15Mr. Liebert: Conversely what will happen with a lot of folks using it the right way is you have to think very deeply, think very critically, reverse engineer the answer you are looking for, and come up with information. That is a process you can teach. That is absolutely a thing can coach folks on. Really even with my team who uses ai in the office, I will give them a hard time when the answer is not good. Like you took the first answer in the chatgpt that gave you, didn't you? Yes, I did. Don't do that.
▶ 1:06:44Mr. Liebert: That is the initial offer. You have to negotiate. How to push it further is really key. All things we can teach to make sure people are getting it but at the same time, the people that are more intellectually curious anyways will push it further, and those are the things we need to teach not only in the workplace but make sure we are teaching our kids as well, our students in academia, making sure they are pushing this to the limit. But again, this is the ability to accelerate your thinking. It should not take the place of making decisions.
▶ 1:07:13Chair Banks: Senator husted.
▶ 1:07:14Sen. Husted: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I am glad we are holding this hearing today. I spent most of my adult life working on economic development, workforce development issues in ohio. Ai is about four years old. Since that time, we are at a point in my state where the unappointed rate is almost as low as it has been in history. We have more jobs than any time in history.
▶ 1:07:42Sen. Husted: Last month, we had the lowest number of job claims nationally since 1969. It does not seem to be having an impact on the number of jobs in the country, but it is certainly changing the nature of jobs in our country. If you are one of the people that the nature of that job changed, it is a problem for you.
▶ 1:08:03Sen. Husted: And so it is a very important issue, and I remember just five years ago if you would have been to a local workforce development board meeting how many conversations did you have about coding would be a great place for people to be five years ago, right? We sent coding. Now, not so much. And electricians, would we have been encouraging that?
▶ 1:08:27Sen. Husted: I just read the wall street journal article today about $200,000 a year technicians and ai is trying to gobble up every one of them that they can to build data centers. So it changes fast. I know in working through this my whole life that it is very hard for government or an agency or anybody to keep up with the pace of change in the economy and the nature of work.
▶ 1:08:50Sen. Husted: And I found from my experience that we have to help people navigate this on their own. Good data is one of the ways that we can do that. I went through this little experiment with my nephew a couple weeks ago. He was trying to get into the air force, and he could not for a variety of reasons. But he still wanted to do something in the aviation aerospace area.
▶ 1:09:16Sen. Husted: So I walked him through how to use his ai to find the companies in the region that did these things, what skills they needed, where you could go get those skills, and do all this. So it is a powerful tool at helping people navigate the job market itself. I think it is important for us.
▶ 1:09:34Sen. Husted: You mentioned workforce pell as an example of how we give people the ability to not have to go away for four years or even for two years, but to go get a workforce credential like that in a matter of weeks that would help qualify them to climb the ladder to these opportunities. One of the things we did in ohio, something called tech cred. It gives people the ability, any adult in ohio, to get an in demand credential.
▶ 1:10:01Sen. Husted: All they have to do is have an employer-sponsored them, and boom, you go get your credential. We have to be faster in how we help people adjust to the changes in the workforce, and so I will start with you, Mr. clark. How? Let me finish with this. The best way to do that is helping the educators and the employers talk to one another so that everybody -- that is one of the roles of the workforce.
▶ 1:10:31Sen. Husted: Tell me your thoughts on how we think through this legislation and the data can help create the ability to help people make their own decisions can help them navigate the world come and get the educators and employers on the same page?
▶ 1:10:44Mr. Clark: Thank you, senator, for the question and for your thoughts. I will say I very rarely joke about educators not really speaking business and business not speaking education. Those are a constant issue we are working on within our community and within our region.
▶ 1:11:02Mr. Clark: What we find more often than not, and we are incredibly lucky in indiana to have a secretary of education who has put workplace learning all the way into the diploma requirements, so what we all imagined for so long was you need a college degree. You made a mention of this. College degree is the answer. And then it was not only a college degree but also internships. You can have experience on your resume coming out. It is not to high school now.
▶ 1:11:26Mr. Clark: We have a requirement that you have to have 75 to 650 hours of work-based learning coming out of high school, to make sure they can be employed early. So really learning as early as possible. We have been able to bridge the gap is about education listening very closely to what is happening. Albert legislature has been involved at the state level in indiana to make sure that is an understanding and mature in his business focused and business first because there is less and less.
▶ 1:11:57Mr. Clark: It is the idea of skills based hiring that the need to gain these skills as fast as possible.
▶ 1:12:01Sen. Husted: It's got to be faster.
▶ 1:12:03Mr. Clark: Yes. Younger too.
▶ 1:12:06Sen. Husted: Think about it, if you went to get your college degree, in four years the entire labor market changed from the time you enrolled as a freshman to wen yu graduated as a senior, so we have to change the way we think about education, and it has to be more of an incremental lifelong education work combination. I know I am running out of time. I see heads nodding. Others want to add to that?
▶ 1:12:32Mr. Liebert: I just want to add it was like in it was like you were in my home talking to my son about coding and then a plumber. That is a real thing.
▶ 1:12:41Sen. Husted: Real thing. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:12:44Sen. Hassan: Thank you, Mr. chair and wrecking member hickenlooper for holding this hearing, and thinking to the witnesses for a really informative discussion. I am really grateful to all of you. Mr. liebert, I will start with a question to you because I think it is important the benefits of ai flow to workers and not just the wealthiest among us. As senator banks and others have mentioned that he and I co-lead a bipartisan bill called the ai workforce prepare act.
▶ 1:13:13Sen. Hassan: Among other things, it would help hold large corporations accountable by requiring companies to publicly disclose when they fire employees in mass layoffs in order to replace those employees with ai, so why is transparency and layoff decisions to go to our understanding of the impact of ai on the workforce and how can this transparency help develop effective protections for workers?
▶ 1:13:38Mr. Liebert: Thank you for that question, senator. That is extreme important to get right now, there is a lot of misinformation out there and fear. The media headlines tell us about these mass layoffs primarily company from a couple companies in specific sets, so I think with the act, I support everything you are trying to do with that. Thank you for putting that together. It is beneficial because it will create the transparency we need and also the data.
▶ 1:14:05Mr. Liebert: If we learn what dislocated workers are doing, that will kind of help us be able to figure out what other skills we need to train on? And be more specific and precise with this. It is going to move very quickly but I think having more specific information in these specific areas to be able to know and to give that back to employers but also the school system so they can help with that retraining and upscaling that is going to happen from this displacement. >> that leads me to my next question which is for Mr. clark.
▶ 1:14:39Mr. Liebert: Senators young, collins, kane, and I have the gateways to career act that would fund local workforce partnerships to create and scale career pathway programs for training workers. By design, community centered programs like this are nimble and responsive to local industry needs. They may workers where they are at in their careers.
▶ 1:14:59Mr. Liebert: We talked about the importance of career pathways and how they may change with ai but when I would love for both of you to do is just talk about what role you see for career pathway programs and helping workers both new and established in their careers get the ai skills that they need to succeed. I would love to hear a little bit more. Mr. clark?
▶ 1:15:20Mr. Clark: There is no doubt that those types of programs, community-based programs that are looking at the dna of a local region and thinking through with employers at the table giving you what those skills need to be and how we build out that with our education partners, k-12, community college, they are great examples where we have little banks of this all over the country.
▶ 1:15:41Mr. Clark: If it allows us to do it with all of our industries, that would be critical for us to be more effective as a workforce intermediary and there are many partners at that table. This is also my state chamber of commerce, local chamber of commerce, economic development. We could all be at the table with businesses listening and we could gain a lot.
▶ 1:16:00Sen. Hassan: Great. 40 seconds, please.
▶ 1:16:03Mr. Liebert: I think we understand that when used properly, ai can level individuals up. It's the same thing for a company, a city, a state, a country. I think this is critical. But again, it's also dependent upon the different types of ecosystems, infrastructure, and industries in these communities. Going back to the communities where this is at is absolutely vital. We don't need to rebuild the entire system for this. A lot of it is there.
▶ 1:16:31Mr. Liebert: Focusing on career pathways because it is going to be all over the place I think is wise versus this one-size-fits-all that doesn't make sense for ai and have got to be very careful and strategic as we deploy these types of education.
▶ 1:16:41Sen. Hassan: Thank you. I want to just drill down on something a couple of the other witnesses were asked about data gaps which I thought was really important. Each of you today has highlighted how and timely data on job losses, occupational changes, and industry needs can help us understand ai's impact on the workforce and inform efforts to protect workers. We had testimony about what some of this data gaps are.
▶ 1:17:11Sen. Hassan: My question is what specific data gaps at the federal level are the most time sensitive for us to address? >> thank you for the question, senator. One of the most important things that we can do is linking some of the business surveys asking about ai tactual hiring and wage outcomes so that we can compare ai using and non-ai using firms directly and to I have 10 seconds.
▶ 1:17:36Sen. Hassan: We have seen the administrative records are the best on this but not as timely as we need them to be and also not directly linked to some of the surveys asking about ai usage so if we could link those, that would help a lot. All of the panelists here are probably in agreement that that would be one of the best things we could do.
▶ 1:17:54Sen. Hassan: I really appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. chair. >> you work in central indiana. What trends do we see that are specific may be to where we come from and do those trends lag the rest of the country? Are they something the rest of the country should be paying attention to?
▶ 1:18:20Mr. Clark: Hyper local. I am involved in central indiana and I look at the central indiana market from an employment perspective and then from a resident service, I'm obviously focused in indianapolis specifically. What we are seeing that I think compares to the rest of the country is that every region has their own unique set of industries. Some are more resilient than others. Some are more likely to be automated or to have ai displace jobs. We all talked about that today.
▶ 1:18:52Mr. Clark: Within indiana, our largest centers are health care which without a doubt will be incredibly resilient. We need nurses and family. It will help support the work by allowing a nurse to spend more time in using clinical judgment and filling out paperwork. That is changing drastically and as we see technology rollout with that kind of capability to automate some of their work, that will be incredible.
▶ 1:19:16Mr. Clark: Health care is the largest industry in most major metropolitan areas across the country because of our -- that will ripple across the country. Not just indiana. Unique to us in indiana and a number of other cities are things like hospitality, transportation, logistics. A large market where we are trying to fill those jobs and struggle to fill logistics jobs even though we have plenty of those jobs.
▶ 1:19:42Mr. Clark: A lot about -- is it about getting employers to agreed on what the skills are in those jobs. Moving between these different organizations is difficult sometimes. Understanding how ai is going to disrupt that is important for all of us but I would say some of it is specific to central indiana, too. We are focused on those industries we know are going to be disrupted most.
▶ 1:20:08Chair Banks: Would you see those trends lag? The trends that are following the rest of the country? >> I would argue that what I have seen in the midwest is that we are really kind of right in the middle of the crossroads of where the nation is as a whole.
▶ 1:20:33Chair Banks: We see the coastal states of virginia, south carolina, florida with much higher rates of uptake in the use of ai and business firm functions than we do in the plains states in the midwest but many of them are starting to catch up, even advancing past california which was an interesting finding with the census bureau data.
▶ 1:21:04Chair Banks: I think part of the challenge that I see for businesses and I will talk about indiana specifically, is they don't know what each other is doing. They don't have data about what they are doing and how quickly are you adopting it? How much are you using generative versus h antic -- versus agentic.
▶ 1:21:29Chair Banks: We have been up in the ai kool-aid a lot in a structured way to get students, faculty, staff using it, knowledgeably governing their use, protecting the data, how many companies know how to implement. As much as we need to have free training of workers, we need to retrain business leaders as well in terms of what it can actually do for them.
▶ 1:22:01Chair Banks: >> can you talk a little bit more about what you remember businesses are asking for from you? What do they need?
▶ 1:22:09Mr. Clark: More often than not, we are hearing that they need employees having some type of experience. With some of those job writing skills, you would expect a lot of us learn them in our first job. Learn how to be on time, to listen to a supervisor, and to work as a team, all of those types of things are the things I hear the most that they feel like is missing as people are coming out of school and going into work.
▶ 1:22:35Mr. Clark: Now with ai, I think that they are expecting even more of an entry-level role than they used to so this idea of work-based learning and learning early in high school and in college enough is critical for people to be successful now.
▶ 1:22:49Chair Banks: Senator kaine? >> Mr. chair and senator hickenlooper, what a great panel. Just a couple of things. I'm really glad that you mentioned the inequity in the tax code where we reward companies for investments in capital but not in human capital training.
▶ 1:23:13Chair Banks: Senator warner has long had a bill to try to equalize the appreciation -- that depreciation schedules for those kinds of investments so that we don't advantage capital investments over capital training investments and I am glad that you mentioned that. One of the things I have been grappling with is I have been listening to Mr.
▶ 1:23:33Chair Banks: >>'s statement with the wary of knocking out the first jobs on the latter so that people can't learn what they need to climb the ladder and it does match up a little bit with some recent employment data suggesting the unemployment rate among young adults is taking up -- ticking up while others are down. 24 to 30-year-olds who are finishing college.
▶ 1:24:01Chair Banks: The new york times did not yet find the ai was a big generator of that although this issue of knocking out the first rung on the latter would make us want to watch that trend. Remote work was a significant reason for it because companies that want to go into remote work would prefer to hire folks that they don't need to mentor because they have already gained the skills through mentoring so if you are going to do a remote work thing, I would need to mentor that first time work of others who have done it already
▶ 1:24:34Chair Banks: Been it. I am very worried about this youth young people, especially starting off their careers, are on -- unemployed or underemployed. We have to think that through. I hope we will grapple with that as a committee. What is an area of work where the young people will never be pushed aside by ai? I thought the military.
▶ 1:25:04Chair Banks: We are never going to say we don't need privates anymore. We will continue to bring in newcomers so I am on the armed services committee. It might be an interesting thing for academics, think tanks, employers to study because the military -- everybody gets mos, military occupation specialist and everybody gets trained in that and I know the different branches of the military are trying to incorporate ai into that training.
▶ 1:25:33Chair Banks: So a systemwide study of the way the military is using ai for that very entry level that 18 year to advance in their skill set and probably works really well -- maybe others not quite so well but it would be a fertile field of study from like one million plus people to see the way ai is being used to augment military training and it's also I think going to end up being a real advantage that folks who have been in the military may have when they get ready to transition into the
▶ 1:26:06Chair Banks: Civilian workforce. I have done in a workforce where what I have been doing has involved pretty significant interaction with ai tools at every step along the way. That will be a positive for military members as they transition but I have got a minute and a half left.
▶ 1:26:25Chair Banks: Does anybody want to offer a thought onto how we should try to focus on the needs of young people so that the squeeze of whether it's -- we are not losing -- depressing the hopes of young people that they will have meaningful careers? You were wanting to jump right in.
▶ 1:26:43Chair Banks: >> one of the things that we need to consider is that one of the things happening is in terms of demographic trends, we are having fewer young people moving up.
▶ 1:27:01Chair Banks: In some ways, ai could wind up helping us mitigate the slowing population gains that we have in the younger population while we have a larger gain in the elderly population so part of what we can do is think about ai not as a thing but as a set of opportunities with knowledge that we can apply to challenges.
▶ 1:27:31Chair Banks: We don't talk about the arts and creative and yet what we have seen through economic analysis of data over the past few years is a significant, small but significant growth, continuing growth in indiana among those creative worker positions.
▶ 1:27:55Chair Banks: One of the things that we have to do is start thinking more creatively or more globally about what is in demand in our neighborhood, in our regions, in our state around high knowledge occupations or skilled trades but what about some of these in the middle?
▶ 1:28:18Chair Banks: >> I would just say as the kind of surprised father of two working artists who are quite confident that their work will never be replaced by ai, I am glad to hear you say that. >> thank you. >> they will use ai. But not be replaced.
▶ 1:28:42Chair Banks: >> thank you, chairman banks as well as ranking member hickenlooper for allowing me to -- the conversation is important and riveting and timely. I must say it is -- I am a person who is generally a very hopeful person. The conversations around ai a lot today are very fear-based. A lot of people have a lot of concerns about losing their jobs.
▶ 1:29:13Chair Banks: There is a soul artist out there making more money than people who actually have souls. It's a challenging time when we talk about ai and also as a former secretary of labor from delaware, I was around when the workforce investment boards were first established and so I have so many questions for you in so little time. One question I have for Mr. clark is workforce investment boards.
▶ 1:29:44Chair Banks: Are there changes that we need to make in light of these changes in technology? That is a question for you. You can write it down and answer it later. Dr. paula, I have a question for you. We have all been talking about the gaps in the data.
▶ 1:30:04Chair Banks: Are there places that you right now, sources of data that you use to help predict and plan now were sources that we don't want to stop collecting, that we need to continue to collect? That is probably for the entire panel. What are we getting right and don't want to stop in terms of getting data? >> thank you for the question, senator.
▶ 1:30:30Chair Banks: The data sources I rely on our almost all federal statistical products so we should definitely continue those because they are helpful for researchers like myself and the co-panelists here would all agree. One of my own recommendations today is adding occupational details for the federal quarterly workforce indicators. It's pursuing the missing piece occupational codes attached to records at the state level. Those two efforts would complement each other well.
▶ 1:31:00Chair Banks: That would be really helpful and if you want any specific surveys, the senses business formation are some of the two are used in my own research that I highlighted here as well as the annual business survey for adoption context. >> thank you for highlighting the results act with my colleagues.
▶ 1:31:23Chair Banks: It's a bipartisan piece of legislation that will support states as they modernize and integrate data systems to answer the important questions really looking longitudinally at how does ai impact work, school, and beyond? I hope my colleagues will join me in that. I think I saw heads shaking and tense of the data sources and if you have more comments, you can do that for the record but I want to switch gears.
▶ 1:31:51Chair Banks: Last year, black women experienced one of the steepest one employment declines in the past century, past quarter of the century. Last week, we marked black women's equal pay day which indicates the amount of time it takes a black woman to earn equal her white counterparts since last year.
▶ 1:32:10Chair Banks: Analysis from the national partnership for women and families found that women make up over half of workers that are most ai vulnerable and the most ai vulnerable occupations with women of color making up nearly one third of workers in ai vulnerable jobs. Dr. heck, in your testimony, you focus on worker mobility. What can you share with us about how the economic mobility of women and people of color in the workforce might be impacted by ai?
▶ 1:32:40Dr. Heck: Thank you so much for the question. I want to introduce the concept of adaptive capacity. It is this idea of how well a worker can whether an involuntary job loss and so in the moments were ai exposure does lead to job loss, not all workers can handle that to the same degree. Some workers will find it harder to see their skills transfer and to be able to weather that financial scoring.
▶ 1:33:10Dr. Heck: The workers in gateway roles are often women and workers of color and those are often among the most exponents roles. Women are 93% of secretaries in administered of assistance. 49 percent of customer service representatives are workers of color. Nearly half, 46% of black women writing median wages or higher are in gateway occupations. We need to think about these pathways and how we can strengthen them and think about the new ones that will build alongside them.
▶ 1:33:35Dr. Heck: >> as a follow-up, I would love it if you could follow up with any strategies you would recommend or any others on the panel. That would be helpful. We are also doing work on updating the warren act. Particularly as it relates to ai or unemployment, folks that are facing layoffs. Would love to follow up with the panelists. Thank you for allowing me to wave onto the committee. I yield back. >> senator hickenlooper. >> thank you, Mr. chair.
▶ 1:34:12Dr. Heck: What a great panel. So diverse. So thoughtful. I do think it is worth pointing out. Senator banks, you asked a couple times whether indiana was lacking or ahead. I spent a fair amount of time on issues when I was back in colorado and indiana is among the top in terms of innovation.
▶ 1:34:35Dr. Heck: To hear that you will require 75 hours of on-the-job training as part of the high school degree, we worked very hard to get -- we got rid of the college degree requirement for over half the workers in the state of colorado but it's a battle. These are efforts that go on and I love several of you alluded to this lifetime of learning skills, that that has got to be explicit that people have that expectation.
▶ 1:35:05Dr. Heck: That is one way we could do this. Let me ask the first question, Dr. heck. I was talking to a lawyer back in denver and he thinks there's going to be a real issue on what happens with -- you are not going to have first-round lawyers. How are they going to get the training to be professional lawyers? Obviously, lawyers provide judgment.
▶ 1:35:35Dr. Heck: It will take a long time to displace. Those young lawyers, you are not going to get as many. It's also possible, and I guess not just Dr. heck but all of you. It doesn't make sense that we could imagine these young lawyers were asking to learn ai and to be able to service more of the senior lawyers as we have a smaller number.
▶ 1:36:01Dr. Heck: The young people who we burden with more responsibility will actually grow faster and I think we learned that from history. Is that plausible from your perspective? >> I think it's possible and it depends on industry as we mentioned before but in the attorneys space especially, ai's ability to reference case law and learn and provide you productivity gains as a new attorney is really something that usually, you would gain later. We still have to learn that.
▶ 1:36:32Dr. Heck: The value of an attorney who understands and can make the judgment based on all of the case law they know, that is really one of those differentiators. Lots of different kinds of attorneys but no question that it could play that role, too. >> Mr. rogers?
▶ 1:36:49Dr. Heck: >> the possibility exists as it does in accounting we are actually, the price per hour, I apologize to any attorneys here. I am married to one. You know, bring down that price per hour charge.
▶ 1:37:11Dr. Heck: The cost that is becoming prohibitive for some people to be able to hire a lawyer or go to a doctor or see a therapist, there are a lot of positions who have an accountant to their taxes. Go ahead. Ok. >> thank you, senator, for the question.
▶ 1:37:36Dr. Heck: I just want to reiterate that one of the key things is that, you know, in law or other fields , ai can automate some of those tasks, augment others. It remains a little bit unclear what will happen in the future and it also depends on the sectors, industry, and occupation. >> is going to be in a bunch of different places. So ready.
▶ 1:38:04Dr. Heck: >> I also agree and I would add another piece of this. Context in all these cases is so critical so there are individuals who will have this context and experience and that counts for a lot. Just having somebody in who has come in and understand the basics of it, who is highly intelligent, is beneficial but the person who has actually been in that courtroom, who has been in the doctor's office or whatever, the context is key to this. I tell a lot of folks that I teach that ai is approaching this genius level intellect.
▶ 1:38:35Dr. Heck: You have to give the ai context. That counts for a lot. >> I think it is certainly possible. Learning requires friction in time. Ai reduces both so I have concerns about the knowledge that was introduced here. There also concerns around the mental load. Early research shows that overseeing ai engines is an exhausting process so when we think about raising folks, we don't want to bring them out early.
▶ 1:39:06Dr. Heck: >> as they get further into it, not as exhausting. Quickset is certainly part of it. I think folks are balancing more plates in the mental load of the task -- and the mental load of the task switching can add up. >> last thing, I got other questions, setting it in writing.
▶ 1:39:34Dr. Heck: I do think we don't have data on managing how well some people are going to adapt to ai and productivity, what they actually provide to the company. They are going to take a giant leap whereas others, having the same tool, are just not going to be able to use it as well and we are going to have to measure that to really begin to predict what we need to be ready for. >> thank you to the ranking member and all of our panelists and guests.
▶ 1:40:05Dr. Heck: For arranging a great conversation. I thought it was a very productive committee hearing today but I am biased. Because I shared it. If there are no further questions, the panel is not excused.
▶ 1:40:22Dr. Heck: I ask unanimous consent for statements from the society of human resource managers, the taxpayers protection alliance, and the southern institute to be instituted into the hearing record. Without objection. For any senator wishing to ask additional questions, questions for the record will be due at 5:00 p.m. On wednesday, august 12. Thank you to all of you for joining us today. This subcommittee is now adjourned.
▶ 1:40:53Dr. Heck: [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]