AI threatens entry-level jobs across industries
Conservative Gen Z influencers Xaviaer DuRousseau and Isabel Brown join ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss the impact AI is having on the Gen Z job market, and how those who embrace it will be rewarded.
Washington Democrats are losing the AI conversation. Not because they are wrong about the risks of AI, but because they have failed to provide Americans with a vision of the economic transformation ahead. While they focus on managing problems, others define what comes next. One side talks about building the future, the other about limiting it.
In November, at Nvidia’s GTC conference in Washington, hundreds of technologists and business leaders celebrated a great American success story: Jensen Huang and the company he co-founded. The speakers praised President Donald Trump for his administration’s approach to AI. Many in the audience saw an administration committed to removing barriers, enabling scale and improving American competitiveness.
This should be a wake-up call for Democrats, who have so far failed to seize the opportunity to talk not only about the risks of AI, but also its potential for broad economic transformation. Democrats have raised many questions about the safety of AI, its biases and its effect on the labor market.
But so far, Democrats have treated these issues as separate issues to be managed, rather than as parts of a larger question: How do we shape this transformation so that there is opportunity for all, not just profit for a few? That’s the conversation Americans deserve.
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DC Democrats must reclaim the AI issue from Republicans. (iStock)
The elite consensus in Washington focuses on one goal: optimizing America’s AI capabilities as a whole. A recent Foreign Affairs essay from former Biden administration officials summarizes the “grand bargain” between government and industry: more infrastructure and capacity for big business. Employees, communities and startups beyond the border are secondary. Build first, expect prosperity to trickle down later. It is a well-known strategy that has not delivered before. Republicans also largely embrace this framework, but Republican populists are astute in recognizing its shortcomings.
What this means in the future: big companies positioned to capture trillions. Employee relocation is a problem that will have to be solved later. Communities provide land, energy and water without guarantees that they will share in prosperity. The Biden administration’s 2023 executive order was extensive on safety testing but said little about prosperity, workers or communities.
Previous waves of automation have hollowed out communities and left workers without a path forward. Innovation rarely creates opportunity without deliberate efforts to strengthen workers, communities and local economies.
Recent polls in swing states show AI sentiment declining as workers link the technology to job insecurity. We all lose. Not to China, but to ourselves. Skepticism crosses ideological boundaries. On the far right, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon warned earlier this year that entry-level jobs will be destroyed. On the far left, democratic socialists see AI as another vehicle for corporate power. Both responses abandon the possibility that AI could spread opportunity rather than concentrate wealth.
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An alternative vision would optimize the flourishing of America’s Davids: our employees, families and innovative startups. The long-term success of large companies also depends on this foundation. It’s not about slowing down. The capital is moving fast anyway. The question is whether we structure this rapid deployment in such a way that it creates broadly shared prosperity or concentrated extraction. Purposeless speed creates the political resistance that actually threatens progress. Speed with a plan ensures sustainable progress.
We’ve done this before. Land-grant universities gave communities interests in research and education. Rural electrification cooperatives gave farmers ownership, not just access. The GI Bill gave veterans the opportunity to build fulfilling careers, not just short-term compensation. Alaska’s Permanent Fund provides dividends to every resident from oil extraction on public lands.
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Now imagine national block grants that allow states to create public computing power for startups and regional economies. The workforce transition funds that employees control, not the programs they endure. Equity stakes when companies benefit from public infrastructure give communities ownership of their future. Third-party insurance markets to accelerate responsible innovation at scale. These are ideas to start a discussion with the American people. This moment calls for a national project worthy of American ingenuity.
Democrats have a long history of this thinking. Rural electrification and rail policies ensured widespread access. Today, the Democratic Senator from Arizona. Mark KellyThe “AI for America” proposal represents the kind of bigger vision we should be debating.
Democrats now have an opportunity to forge an alternative path and offer our country a national project that centers advances in AI as a critical innovation for a prosperous, healthy, and secure future for all Americans.
Purposeless speed creates the political resistance that actually threatens progress. Speed with a plan ensures sustainable progress. Only new technology is good. But it is even better when it is accompanied by policies and market approaches that emphasize economic security, opportunity and dignity for the American people.
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Democrats are flat-footed. Fear is increasing among populists on the right and left. The urgent question now is whether both sides will challenge the elite consensus that sees the consequences of economic transformation for workers, communities and startups as imaginary or as problems to be solved later.
This moment requires a vision that takes into account all Americans, our workers, communities, and especially start-up entrepreneurs.
