The AI Job Disaster Congress Refuses to Fix

15:59Gina Raimondo:need to open these data centers.

16:00Kara Swisher:So why didn't they in the first place?

16:02Gina Raimondo:Because they have to be made to.

16:04Kara Swisher:They have to be made to, right.

16:06Gina Raimondo:They have to be made to. If I were still the governor, Rhode Island doesn't have any open space, but if I were still the governor, but theoretically if we had space for a data center i would say yeah you can come here under

16:19Kara Swisher:these conditions one of the things when you talk about job loss you often talk about your father who lost his job at the bull of a watch factory in the 1980s when the company moved manufacturing to china um with ai adoption we're walking into as i said something faster than anything else that's coming talk about that transition and as you said what did we get wrong in that transition And that was happening at a much slower pace than what's happening now.

16:43Gina Raimondo:So I use that a lot as an analogy, you know, to what we're facing now. In that case, every company, every manufacturing company, they put their blinders on. They focused exclusively on efficiency, enhanced profit from moving labor to China. They did better for a period of time, except it really destroyed the country in many ways. because the quote-unquote losers like my dad, they were concentrated. It was non-college educated men in a handful of states. And that brought us, I think that sowed the seeds for a lot of this dysfunctional politics and anger and such that we see today. And the thing of it is, it didn't have to be that way.

17:28Gina Raimondo:We could have had a planned, intentional transition, and that's what I would like to, that's why I'm doing Raise Us. I want to play my part in having a planned, intentional transition. By the way, the same was true for the CHIPS Act, right? Like, those of you who don't know, one of my achievements in the Biden administration, we passed the CHIPS Act because all manufacturing of leading-edge chips left this country and all went to Taiwan, all of it. And we woke up one day and said, my God, national security risk. and we spent hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to fix that by incentivizing Taiwanese and Korean companies to come back.

18:11Gina Raimondo:Why didn't we have the foresight to say, hold on a minute, if we allow every stitch of chip manufacturing to go to Taiwan, we're going to wake up one day and be a less safe country. So if you were to say to me, hey Gina, what's the biggest risk of AI? And I know a lot about China and I know a lot about everything I went through. It's this jobs disruption leading to a full-on fraying of our democracy and political institutions, which I argue is not in the interest of any tech company. It's not in the interest of any company. I don't know a single company benefited from mass unrest, rioting in the streets, sky-high unemployment.

18:59Gina Raimondo:So get in the boat. Don't wait for that to happen. Get in the boat today. Have a planned transition because the fact of the matter is it's in everyone's interest.

19:09Kara Swisher:Do you think they're serious about that? Do you see a concern from tech companies that may be causing this damage?

19:14Gina Raimondo:You know, look, so I put a big coalition of companies together, including tech companies. We have a couple dozen. So we'll see. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. We have competitors working together. And so we have to try. At the end of the day, this is all going to take law and regulations and such. But I do think they're worried. Although even a lot of them who are raising the alarm bell, a warning isn't a solution. You know what I mean? Okay, warning, what are we doing about it? How, and I don't, I will not just put all the blame or responsibility at the foot of AI companies, right?

19:58Gina Raimondo:It's every American company implementing AI. I refuse to believe there's not a way to use AI, invent AI, lead the world in AI, and implement it in a way so that we have a smooth transition without sky-high unemployment. Like, there is a way. So let's figure it out.

20:22Kara Swisher:So each episode we get an expert question. Here's yours from Joanna Stern.

20:27Gina Raimondo:Hi, I'm Joanna Stern, a tech journalist and the author of I Am Not a Robot, My Year Using AI to Do Almost Everything. My question for Gina Raimondo is this. I am currently reporting on a company that pays low-wage workers to wear head-mounted cameras, and they're wearing these while doing their jobs, including house cleaning, so that the data can be used to train robots. In the short term, those workers earn money. In the long term, they may be helping train the very robots that could replace them. And we've seen this already in customer service. What do you say to someone who's literally training the AI that is going to create their replacement?

21:04Gina Raimondo:Is retraining enough, or do we need new economic models that let workers share in the value that they're helping create? No, retraining's not enough. It's not enough. It's a piece of the puzzle. But, you know, I've already said we need new forms of transition support, incentives for companies, disincentives for mass layoffs. It is possible. Listen, it's a very dynamic economy. Our economy is amazing. As much as we complain about it, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world. Most of the jobs in American economy today didn't exist 50, 60 years ago. And I really am still bullish that in some number of years, AI is going to create new jobs, new businesses that we can't now predict.

21:56Gina Raimondo:But you cannot pull the rug out from under tens of millions of Americans quickly. You just can't. And think that we're still going to have an America that we want to live in.

22:05Kara Swisher:Mm-hmm. When you look at that picture, that is what's happening. I know that. And I recall when I went down, when they were going to, remember it was going to be Silicon Holler. They were going to train former coal workers to be software workers, which thank goodness they didn't because they would have been replaced by AI very quickly. But I got up and said, actually, none of you are going to be doing this. You didn't get the proper education. And besides, AI is going to replace you. And FYI, as soon as the guy sitting next to me, who was the coal mine owner, can use robots to replace you, he's going to do it in five seconds.

22:37Kara Swisher:And he was like, no, I'm not. I'm like, oh, you will. I know you will. I'm absolutely certain. No question. In fact, you probably already bought one. And the workers, I thought I would sort of get the workers mad at me. They were appreciative because I was like, you're not, they're going to replace you. So how do you, if you think of where jobs are going, what is the role of the human being? And the only saving grace is right now, tokens are more expensive than people. These are the tokens you use AI for, right? So what kind of jobs exist? Because this Raise AI you're doing with Eric Holcomb, who is the former governor of Indiana, Republican.

23:10Kara Swisher:And you're working with Maryland, Arkansas, Utah, and Connecticut. Very nice. Two, two. Two, two, and two. Two, two. Two blue, two red, right? Sort of reddish, yeah. What jobs do you imagine happening there? So I would say it's hard to know right now.

23:28Gina Raimondo:I do think that, like I said, I think there'd be a lot more startups. And you're already starting to see that. Let me say, it's very early days, very early days. I think it's a little early to tell who's losing the job, who's gaining the job. You started to see the freak out with no one could get a job in software engineering, but now software engineering job openings are up again. My general view is this. Right now, people say, oh, it's a strong economy, 4-ish percent unemployment. You've got to get under the hood of that number. If you're working part-time in America, you're counted as employed, even if you have a crappy 20-hour-a-week job.

24:09Gina Raimondo:We have a lot of people who are economically insecure, et cetera. So I think the way I think about it is we have to focus on entry-level workers and help them get jobs. We've got to put pressure on companies. I want to get the first company to say, we are not cutting our analyst program. Right? So we've got to focus on that. We have to focus on these call center workers. They have skills. You cannot just fire them all. You've got to figure out what they're good at and help them get another job. There's an economic theory, which I think is probably true. When you make stuff cheaper, people want more of it.

24:48Gina Raimondo:So if because of AI, things are more productive, it's cheaper to make software, there may be more of it. All of which is to say, I don't think anyone knows where the new jobs are coming from. The companies need to know that. And I think we have to hold them to account.

25:02Kara Swisher:What jobs are you most worried about? You mentioned a few that you're worried about. Which ones do you feel are safe in the economy in that regard?

25:10Gina Raimondo:Well, I definitely think it's a timeline, you know, like safe. 50 years from now, who knows what the world's going to look like. Well, we'll be dead, so what do we care? Yes, exactly. But any kind of trade is in hot demand right now. Technicians are in demand. Fibers technicians are in demand. Helped by AI because they have more. Exactly. Clinical jobs. Like, there's another thing. America's workforce system is pretty terrible, right? We just route everybody to college and hope it works out. and it mostly doesn't.

25:49Kara Swisher:It's true. 40 % of people who... Ladies and gentlemen, she's running for president. It doesn't work out.

25:58Gina Raimondo:You know, you go to college. In any event, we have shortages right now of physical therapists, respiratory therapists, all kinds of clinical workers, aides, but yet you go try to become a physical therapist. It's really hard. It's expensive. There aren't enough spots in schools. It takes forever. So let's use the occasion of AI, which could be a crisis, and start fixing these institutions. Get people where the jobs are. There are some, and let's get going.

26:36Kara Swisher:So presumably, like a lot of technologies, they do cut jobs and then they create them. That tends to be the historical. Many tech people will tell you that's not going to be the case this time. They do say that. Now they don't because they're PR people. I don't either. But I do think that at some point you wouldn't have anticipated Uber by the beginning of the Internet age or Airbnb or any. You might have, but you wouldn't have necessarily. And what's interesting is some of your funders of this, Raise Us, are tech companies because they're obviously concerned.

27:12Kara Swisher:Why would you take their money? I mean, I would take their money if it was to screw with them. I'm good with that. But you want to guard against reputation insurance with these companies, presumably. For them, not you. Oh, for them. Yeah.

27:28Gina Raimondo:Look, you're going to have to ask them why they gave the money. I'm trying to solve a problem. I'm trying to come up with ways to get America through this transition, be creative, innovate new things. And they're funding the effort. So I'm going to take them at their word, and we're going to see what works. But they're not running the company. I am. It's a nonprofit, not a company. So I just feel that it's time for action. It's time for, like I've said, let's try some new things.

28:02Kara Swisher:So say you were the head of the president of the United States, for example.

28:07Gina Raimondo:Yes. That would be a refreshing change if I weren't. relative to what we have.

28:12Kara Swisher:What would be the important, what would be the first thing you would do here then? In this, you know, you help, you were very critical to this, the CHIPS Act. What is, what kind of scale, if the first thing you would do as a president in this area?

28:27Gina Raimondo:Very first thing I would do.

28:29Kara Swisher:Besides taking the gold down, go ahead, move along.

28:31Gina Raimondo:Yeah, the gold. I have a funny story about that. No, go ahead. So, sorry, when I became governor, you get something called the gorget. Does anyone know what a gorget is? Anyway, it's like a giant piece of metal. It's a metal shield from the days when, you know, the governor commanded the militia in the colonies in Rhode Island. Okay. And so I'd put my head down and they put this gigantic, like 10-pound shield around me. And when my mom, who's hilarious and dry-witted, came up to the stage to, you know, congratulate me, she said, nice bling, G. So when I think of gold, I think of the bling.

29:14Kara Swisher:Anyway, okay, like first, first, first. You should go give it to Trump and get something from him.

29:18Gina Raimondo:Yeah, yeah. It's not gold. He wouldn't like it.

29:23Kara Swisher:First thing is safety. Neither is what's in the White House, but go ahead.

29:28Gina Raimondo:Safety, safety, safety, safety, safety. You know, this stuff is pretty scary. You just did a program on cyber. I don't want to freak anyone out, but these models get pretty scary pretty fast. Yes, they do. With respect to cybersecurity, in the hands of bad actors who want to take down our hospital system, want to take down our military, want to take down our infrastructure. It's pretty scary pretty fast. It is. Creating new pathogens. And average people can do it.

29:58Kara Swisher:It's not everyone's like the Chinese. I'm like, the Chinese has no interest in our country collapsing. Correct. Some crazy person with a nuclear weapon does.

30:06Gina Raimondo:totally completely right uh bioterrorism same thing it's not that hard for quote unquote average people to create new pathogens so i would be all over that like like i already said standards pre-deployment testing regulations with penalties you got to get on that pronto um and then i'd get with our allies maybe even china china has no interest in this stuff getting into the hands of terrorists or non-state actors. So I would be all over that right away. And then I would get very aggressive around the economics. It's hard for me to sit here today and know exactly what I would do, but by the time I'm in that position, raise us, we'll have some great pilots and we can scale the good ones.

30:54Gina Raimondo:No, seriously, I don't know. You need major overhaul of unemployment insurance. We need much more creative thinking about mid-career transition support and training. Companies need incentives. I mean, look, you might like CEOs, you might not, you might like companies, you might not, it doesn't matter. We all respond to incentives. You're a CEO, you fire people today, your stock price goes up tomorrow. It's an incentive. You hire a human being, you pay for that human being, payroll taxes, healthcare benefits, et cetera, you use an agent, free. That is not the right set of incentives. So at some point, maybe we have to tax AI usage by companies.

31:38Gina Raimondo:We need a different set of incentives.

31:40Kara Swisher:Yeah, I like that idea.

31:42Gina Raimondo:When I was governor in Rhode Island, I put in a new tax on software as a service. Now, there's a lot of reasons you might not like that. However, it raised money. and we may have to get to that place, right? Like if we find companies buying lots of tokens and firing lots of people. And dumping them on the government to deal with. Dumping them on the government to deal with, Medicaid, food stamps, whatever. That's a free lunch that they shouldn't have. So we got to figure out our way through it. We'll be back in a minute.

32:33Kara Swisher:When you think about higher education, and I see now your presidential run will be about college, what's it for? Here at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. But how does higher education? I am paying a lot of bills for two kids. I know. I feel your pain. I feel your pain on that. My son's at Michigan. Oh, go blue. Yeah, go blue. Oh, God. Those people never stop. I know that. I get it, but calm down. I know.

33:05Gina Raimondo:I know.

33:06Kara Swisher:You are the best. It's a disease. It is. It is a disease. I'm married to a Wolverine.

33:10Gina Raimondo:Are you?

33:12Kara Swisher:I ran into a guy who was about 100 years old, and I was wearing a Michigan dad hat. My son got me. Oh. It's perfect. and this guy, literally he was 100 years old, he's like, that was the best time of my life. And I'm like, and he goes, go blue, it was the best time of my life. I was like, you literally had the worst life ever then. Yes, exactly. Because that was the best time. It was all downhill after 21. That's a little sad. Anyway, sorry, let's trash other universities while we're here at Johns Hopkins. But how does higher education fit into this? This university's, you know, incorporating AI into the curriculum, preparing students for jobs.

33:52Kara Swisher:you know, beyond, you know, creative cheating? Like, what is important about that?

33:58Gina Raimondo:Yeah, that is rampant.

33:58Kara Swisher:Yeah, it is, but again.

34:00Gina Raimondo:So I have a lot of views on this. That might not surprise you. Look, I think we need many fewer colleges. There's about 4 ,000 in this country. Not you guys. You're awesome. but just like listen there's four about 4 000 universities colleges in this country many many many don't have great outcomes it is expensive 30 plus percent of kids who start college don't finish that means they have a lot of debt no degree and maybe not a great job job. And if you're a high school student, when you graduate in this country, there's precious few other options. You go into the military. Awesome. You can go into a labor union, do a trades job.

34:58Gina Raimondo:Awesome. Otherwise, what do you do? You get routed to college or you get some low wage service job. That's not okay. You know, why? And that's one of the things that raised us. I want to build. why does Germany and the UK and everything, why can you get an apprenticeship program? Like, why don't we have apprenticeships in this country? Why don't we have training options that are shorter than a four-year college and set you up for a job where they're connected to a job? So I'm hopeful that with AI, we get to the business of doing big things. You know, if you get lucky enough to go to Johns Hopkins, lucky enough to go to Notre Dame, Michigan, great.

35:39Gina Raimondo:you're gonna it's great but you know not everyone can do that i'm not an educator i'm not going to pretend i am one so you have to ask educators how to educate in the age of ai i would simply say this every employer i talk to and i talk to a lot all the time they want people who show up on day one who know how to use ai to do the job not ai to cheat not AI to do a simple query. So it's... Where do you get the ROI from it, right? Yeah, exactly. You have to show up on the job knowing how to use AI for that job. So you guys in higher ed, you have to, I don't know how you do it. You got to figure out how to teach people still critical thinking and how to write, but you can't ignore AI.

36:28You have to teach them those actual skills, otherwise they

36:31Gina Raimondo:will never get that job.

36:32Kara Swisher:I'm sure we have some Johns Hopkins students in the audience. What would you say to them on what to expect and how to prepare for their futures? Because they're really on the pointy end of all these changes, especially some of them. I mean, I also have older kids. My son is a cook, so robots aren't really good. Oh, that's great. I know, he's doing great. I just had a delicious meal in San Francisco where he's at. And I know my other son thinks about it a lot, because that's why he went into mechanical engineering, because he knows energy. He did not go into software engineering on purpose, because he saw AI coming.

37:02Kara Swisher:What would you say to a college student right now of how to prepare themselves for people in the audience that are students?

37:08Gina Raimondo:So first of all, I'll tell you, I have a 22-year-old kid who was asking me about this yesterday. And I'll tell you what I said to her, which is face the future with courage, right? Don't be afraid. It's going to be ups and downs. Face the future with courage. There are going to be jobs, okay? I really do not buy into the, there's going to be nothing for humans to do because the agents will do everything. There's a hundred reasons why that isn't true. And remember, just because a model can do something in your lab in Silicon Valley doesn't mean that it will and immediately displace everyone. I mean, in 2006, Elon was saying we'll have no truck drivers by, I think, I don't know, 2015 or something.

37:50Gina Raimondo:He said a lot of things. That's my point. But these guys...

37:53Kara Swisher:Do you know we have 50 ,000 Optimus Prime robots in our homes right now?

37:59Gina Raimondo:I did not know that. He said that many years ago.

38:02Kara Swisher:Yeah. We don't have any.

38:03Gina Raimondo:Yeah, no, exactly.

38:04Kara Swisher:Do you know there'd be thousands of his self-driving taxis across the world? There are, but they're not his. Perfect example. Perfect example. Did you know we're going to be on Mars last year? We're behind. You're behind. We're behind.

38:21Gina Raimondo:But he is more than welcome to go to Mars. I tell this to my own kids. Look at where the jobs are open in the economy. Maybe you have your heart set on being something. Maybe you can do that at another point if there's no jobs right now. There are open jobs now. Learn how to use the technology. Learn how to be an entrepreneur. Consider starting a business. And most of all, learn how to make good decisions, judgment, like staying calm under pressure. The only thing that's certain right now is we're in for a wild ride. so developing the skills of the resilience to get you through the wild ride and being scrappy and resourceful and self-starter like it's important to learn those skills because any individual job you plan for is going to change and so you just got to get ready for that and not everyone can deal with change change is scary if you were 21 year old

39:24Kara Swisher:you're a 21 year old Gina I wish me too You will soon do that through technology.

39:33Kara Swisher:What job would you be doing right now? You're leaving college. What would you do?

39:37Gina Raimondo:I'd try to start my own business. I would. You know, I think it's pretty cool that with AI, you can use AI to start a business on the cheap, but not that many. There's so many problems to solve in the world. That's the other thing. Face the future with courage. Pick a problem and try to solve it. Like, that's what I would do. What would be the problem? Oh, gosh. Not enough cheesecakes? What? I don't know. You can make a better cheesecake. I don't have those skills. Something in health care. It's like there's too many people who, like, don't get health care in this country. Like, man, bring down the cost.

40:15Gina Raimondo:You know, bring down the cost of delivering health care so everybody can get some.

40:19Kara Swisher:Yeah.

40:20Gina Raimondo:All right.

40:21Kara Swisher:Anyway, thank you so much, Secretary. Do I call you Secretary or Governor? which one are you supposed to keep I was just with Clinton and I didn't know which one to call her you should just call me Gina thank you so much Gina and thank you maybe Ms. President someday and thank you again to the Johns Hopkins for hosting us here tonight at the Bloomberg Center we'll be back later this year for more conversations about the intersection of AI innovation and public policy and you can sign up at washingtondc.jhu.edu you to find out how to join us. I'll be back with a really interesting speaker, the next one.

41:01Kara Swisher:And I'm so glad you're here. And I'm so glad you come out. It's really wonderful. IRL is back. I'm sorry to tell you, but that's and I'm so glad. Thank you so much. Thank you.

41:39Kara Swisher:your career is AI proof. If not, then get to retraining. Go wherever you listen to podcast, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.