New Bipartisan Non-Profit Aims to Ease AI-Driven Workforce Transition

The new group, called RAISE US, is led by former Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo, who also served as Secretary of Commerce under President Joe Biden. The organization, launched Thursday is initially backed by $500 million from corporate donors including Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, Bank of America, General Motors, Mastercard and Eli Lilly, among others, as well as from philanthropies and foundations. Its aim is to develop a series of state-level pilot programs built around training and education to test different strategies for preparing America’s workforce for the AI-powered future.

The group plans to work primarily through governors, starting with Utah, Arkansas, Maryland and Connecticut, rather than through the federal government. The theory behind the plan, according to the New York Times, is that states generally control their community college systems, which can integrate work force policy with course offerings and industry partnerships.

In addition to Raimondo, the group was founded by former Republican Indiana governor Eric Holcomb. The advisory board includes former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, billionaire investment manager Stephen Schwarzman, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and the economists David Autor, Erik Brynjolfsson and Raj Chetty.

“This is an independent effort,” Raimondo said at an event announcing the group’s launch. “It’s the first one I know of where competitors in the tech industry have put aside their competition to say, ‘We’re going to write big checks and, in the service of our country, do what we can to figure out this transition.’”

The bulk of the groups budget will go fund pilot programs overseen by a staff of around 15 RAISE US employees and consultants, per the Times.

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In its first year, the group plans to test ideas such as expanding “service year” opportunities for young people in healthcare or education, where there are job shortages, and updating unemployment insurance programs to help laid-off workers start businesses with AI. The pilots will be funded with money from RAISE US and the participating states.

“Part of the reason we’re working with governors is because they can move faster,” Raimondo said. “If there is a period of concentrated job loss, I do expect the federal government will have to intervene, and my greatest hope at that time, however many years away that is, is that when they do that, they’ll look to our work.”

RAISE US plans to spend its initial $500 million budget over the next three to four years, while continuing to raise funds with a target of $1 billion. “We can scale up as well over time, but I’ll just be frank, a billion dollars wouldn’t be enough to affect the need that is out there,” Holcomb told Politico. “That just shows you how big the issue is.”

The group insists that its goals are bigger than traditional job retraining efforts, which Raimondo acknowledge are often ineffective. Sam Manning, a senior research fellow with GovAI, a think tank, told the Times the new group’s work offered a new opportunity to learn about what could work best.

“This model — of let’s work within states and try to do pilots and demonstration programs, build more evidence, learn what works for different types of workers with different constraints — does seem to me like a pretty good thing to do,” he said.

Source: The New York Times