How AI Will Change Organized Labor

0:00Today on the AI Breakdown, we're reading an essay from current Biden administration on why AI needs to benefit workers of all types. The AI Breakdown is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Go to breakdown.network for more information about our YouTube, our Discord, and our newsletter.

0:24Hello, AI friends. Happy weekend. And of course, it being the weekend means it is time for an AI Long Read. Now, one of the big themes of AI this year is AI in the policy context. This is both because it is an election year in the United States, but also because in the wake of the explosion of AI in 2023, governments around the world are racing to catch up, to regulate, to make policy. And we're seeing this already in the US in the context of some of the provisions and areas of exploration that were written into the Biden executive order last year, starting to come to fruition at the beginning of this year.

1:00Today, we are reading an essay that was published on Yahoo Finance by White House National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard, formerly a member of the Federal Reserve and Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su. Given that these are current administration members, and that presumably this went through a whole legal vetting process, you can assume that it is representative not just of these folks' opinions, but of the larger administration. So let's give it a read, and then we'll come back and we'll discuss it a little further. The piece is called Biden Admin Says Rules Must Ensure AI Boom Does Right By Workers.

1:33They write, American workers are making themselves heard. But just as workers are starting to lay the foundation for a stable future, the rise of artificial intelligence is creating new uncertainty. American workers are seeing strong wage gains beyond inflation, the longest stretch of an unemployment rate below 4 % in 50 years, and historic collective bargaining agreements across the economy. Yet opinion polls show nearly 4 in 10 Americans say they don't know how AI will change their jobs. One in four express FOBO, fear of becoming obsolete. AI holds tremendous promise and potential peril. On the one hand, AI can improve medical diagnoses, make work less burdensome, and increase productivity for workers and companies.

2:11On the other, it threatens to exacerbate bias, erode job quality, and displace workers. For example, the use of AI to inform hiring, promotion, or disciplinary decisions without meaningful oversight can replicate bias embedded in the data on which it is trained. Similarly, algorithmic management tools that monitor worker performance or allocate work tasks may create risks of injury. And the massive amounts of data these technology tools use can violate workers' privacy or jeopardize their ability to organize unions. President Biden has stated his commitment to the safe and responsible development of AI and to both fostering innovation and protecting workers.

2:45Simply put, AI is neither safe nor responsible unless it does right by workers. The role of AI in our lives will be determined by choices that we make as a society, and industry, labor, workers, and government all have a role to play. As the most pro-union, pro-worker president in history, President Biden has made clear that workers must have a seat at the table as AI is designed and deployed. And as we just marked the 90-day anniversary of the president's executive order on the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence, this becomes more imperative. Labor and industry are already finding win-win solutions that nurture creativity and innovation while safeguarding workers' livelihoods.

3:22In September, the 20 ,000 screenwriters of the Writers Guild of America struck a historic collective bargaining agreement their first ever to address AI. The agreement ensures that writers alone receive writing credits and prevent studios from using AI for scriptwriting, while giving writers the choice to use AI as a tool to support their creative work. Similarly, rail workers have negotiated to ensure that workers oversee any AI-enabled technologies used to scan railway cars. Culinary workers in Las Vegas secured commitments of advance notice before new technologies, including robotics, are deployed in the workplace.

3:53Modern collective bargaining agreements like these underscore the vital role of unions in building and fortifying the middle class now and in the future. They also provide positive, replicable models for the broader labor market. Whether a union exists or not, industry and labor can establish formal mechanisms to incorporate workers' perspectives into AI development and deployment, equip workers with the digital literacy necessary to adapt to AI-enabled work, and advocate collectively for worker-centric policies. This is exactly what Microsoft has recently done in a newly announced partnership with the AFL-CIO.

4:23Importantly, Microsoft has also pledged to maintain neutrality in any future organizing efforts. The Biden administration is committed to doing its part. This includes embedding worker protections in rules for key grant programs and continuing to promote high-quality jobs and the right to organize through the Department of Labor's Good Jobs Initiative. The Department of Labor is also creating a set of principles for the responsible worker-centric use of AI. These principles will prescribe vital safeguards such as transparency in the use of AI, careful pre-deployment testing of AI systems, appropriate and meaningful human review of their outputs, and privacy-enhancing technologies.

4:54Additionally, the National Science Foundation is investing in critical research around privacy-preserving techniques, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already released guidance to ensure the use of AI aligns with civil rights laws. We are going further to ensure workers thrive in an AI-powered economy and can take advantage of benefits that this technology might bring by supporting inclusive training programs that help all workers access jobs created or changed by AI. The administration is also preparing detailed policy recommendations to protect and support workers against potential AI-related job displacement.

5:24After decades of rising income inequality and communities of workers being left behind in previous periods of technological advancements, we need to ensure that any economic windfalls from AI do not come at the expense of displaced workers. Instead, reinvesting gains from AI in workers will help us secure stronger economic growth for decades to come. AI has already proven to be a powerful new technology, but its productive use for the benefit of all of society depends upon us. Employers, industry, and government should only be advancing AI that works for workers, because that's the only way AI works for America.

5:55All right, so back to NLW here. I'm no longer reading. And there are, of course, some things about this, in fact, most of it, that could be read pretty much just as a campaign positioning statement. That was probably most clear in that line as the most pro-union, pro-worker president in history. With that line, obviously, we have a sense of why they are writing this document now, and how, frankly, the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party writ large is trying to connect the AI issue to broader election issues. Now, that said, just because it is an election positioning thing doesn't mean it's a dismissible thing.

6:28And frankly, it's not surprising to me to see this attempted reconnection between labor and the AI issue. One of my theses for some time has been that AI was inevitably going to cause a resurgence of organized labor. Organized labor has been on the decline for many, many years for a variety of reasons which are beyond the scope of this show, but the emergence of AI gives it a totally new and important raison d 'etre, which also has the capacity to bring new types of actors into the fold. Holding aside whether ultimately the increased productivity that comes from AI ends up just be getting an entirely new set of industries, even more work, lots of different types of work, new jobs that we can't imagine yet, basically all of those things which will make us see it as a net positive for jobs and workers in the long term, there is no doubt that in the short and medium term, there is going to be disruption.

7:19Certain categories of jobs will be automated away, others will be changed so totally that you'll barely recognize them, And in the process, no matter how many reskilling and retraining programs we have, which I think there will be many, lots and lots of people are going to have a difficult time with it. There's just no way around that. What's more, it's likely that the people who do find those challenges are not exactly the same types of workers that were hit quite as hard by previous automation moments. The fact that AI is coming for low-level knowledge workers especially, and the routine tasks that form the substance of a lot of their jobs, like I said, creates a totally new group of people who might be incentivized to participate in a renewed labor movement.

8:00I think we're going to see this far beyond the halls of Hollywood, and I think that as labor strengthens and labor movements strengthen, necessarily those things will once again become a more powerful political bloc, which means that politicians will once again court labor in a way that they haven't as much over the past several decades. We also see in AI an attempt among government to reassert control over big tech and make up ground that it has lost to the corporate and private sector, particularly in the technology sector over the past several decades. Today's corporations are undoubtedly more powerful relative to government than they have been in the past.

8:37And at the very top of the heap, of course, are the big tech companies who are just by far the biggest companies in the world. AI represents a moment of potentially even greater concentration of power for those companies. And so to some extent, when you watch policy discussions, you have to think about it not just in terms of specific actions. In other words, not just in terms of the specific policies that they're here proposing to make AI work for workers, but in terms of a more overall picture of government trying to once again assert its will vis-a-vis those corporations and big tech companies.

9:08There is a huge jockeying for power, in other words, that is happening right in front of our eyes, and individual consumers, individual workers are going to be right at the center of it. Now, there may be an inherent sort of skepticism or cynicism that comes through in my voice, But I don't think it has to be a bad thing. All of these things that we've been discussing here today, and even the things that they're talking about in this article, I think that there are ways, in other words, for the Biden administration or the next administration, whoever they may be, to do things that are immensely net positive for workers, to fill in gaps that will be left by market forces around things like retraining, reskilling, etc.

9:47In fact, aiding in the transition between the pre-AI world and the post-AI world, where, as I mentioned before, I think there is inevitable disruption even if we optimistically think that the post-AI world is going to be much better, is a much better place for the government to play than just trying to slow down how fast we get to that post-AI world. Whatever you think, whether you agree with that or not, or think I'm nuts, the fun thing is there are going to be lots more chances to debate and discuss it throughout this year. So come on down, join the AI Breakdown Discord, let's chat about it, and of course, until next time, peace.