Rounds, Working Group to Host AI Discussion on Workforce
Forum to Feature DSU President José-Marie Griffiths
WASHINGTON – On Wednesday, November 1, U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and the bipartisan Artificial Intelligence (AI) working group will host a discussion focused on AI in the workforce. The forum will feature academic and industry experts, including Dr. José-Marie Griffiths, President of Dakota State University. The group will discuss the intersection of AI and the workforce and will aim to explore how AI will alter the way that Americans work. In addition to Rounds, the AI working group is comprised of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).
“AI is leading to incredible advancements in our daily lives, including the way we work,” said Rounds. “From medicine and manufacturing to entertainment and hospitality, workers in all industries will feel the impacts of AI. I look forward to hearing from Dr. Griffiths and other top experts as we discuss the development of AI in the workforce.”
In addition to Griffiths, featured speakers include:
- Allyson Knox, Microsoft – Senior Director of Education Policy and Programs
- Ameenah Salaam, Communication Workers of America – Secretary-Treasurer
- Anton Korinek, University of Virginia – Professor
- Arnab Chakraborty, Accenture – Senior Managing Director of Data and AI and Global Responsible AI Lead
- Austin Keyser, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers – Assistant to the International President
- Bonnie Castillo, National Nurses United – Executive Director
- Chris Hyams, Indeed – Chairman and CEO
- Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Professor
- Michael Fraccaro, Mastercard – Chief People Officer
- Michael Strain, American Enterprise Institute – Director of Economic Policy Studies
- Patrick Gaspard, Center for American Progress – President and CEO
- Paul Schwalb, UNITE HERE – Secretary-Treasurer of DC Local 25
- Rachel Lyons, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) – Legislative Director
- Rob Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation – Founder and President
In May 2023, the working group was formed to pursue the opportunities and tackle the threats presented by AI. In order to provide additional information to members of the Senate, the working group has hosted a series of briefings. These briefings have included a first-of-its-kind forum that featured top tech leaders including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and a panel discussion comprised of academic and industry experts focusing on how AI is transforming health care.
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He can’t come up with anything worse than Biden’s executive order on AI. It was clearly written by a frightened old person. We should be talking about how AI can give us a competitive edge on the global stage and can give us a way to overcome China’s numerical advantage in a hypothetical conflict in the Pacific. Instead, the White House’s guidelines are all about nerfing and limiting AI. Treats it like a disease to be coped with instead of an exciting new tool that could help people and produce a 21st-century economy if properly managed.
dear SDDP go back to using anonymous, you ain’t no democrat lol.
“a-i in the workforce” is code-speak for pushing as far and fast as possible to shake costly humans out of the workforce, for its presumed positive effect on input costs. Also doing it before you can be stopped or sandbagged like hollywood has been with the sag-aftra strikes.
“competing with china” is the usual neo-con globalist dog-whistle, nothing more.
i have enjoyed supporting sen rounds as a registered republican, and am glad he takes on these issues and reports back to us.
as a registered republican i have no love for the neo-cons, or whatever they call global interventionists now. i also have little use for the isolationist trotskyites who blindly cheerfully follow trump. i’m praying for actual smart republican leadership to reassert itself. rounds is one of the key people in which that leadership resides, and again, i’m glad he’s leading in these areas.
“If properly managed.” That is the problem i don’t rust anything Gates or Zuckerberg is involved in.
Threats presented by AI? I would wager that all those union representatives in the group are CERTAINLY threatened by AI. Especially since AI can do many of those tasks cheaper and at a level of quality much higher than humans.
that was always the argument for shipping our production capacity and systems over to china or down to mexico back in the 1990s. the thing that’s always the same is sucking all the cash upward and leaving downsized worker pools and detritus behind. that’s why the unions are there. they would totally rather be doing something else.
Cheapening the value of work by people in a time of declining birth rates, a cheapening of the value of education, and accelerating the value of computer generated “solutions”, doesn’t provide much room for “Mr. and Mrs. Six Pack” to prosper. More and more people, citizens, are becoming expendable.
Don’t forget an ever expanding disparity in wealth concentration between the masses and the 1%.
Then there is the dumbing down and frying brain cells resulting in those giving up any remaining cognitive abilities by an over reliance of AI for basic interpersonal skills.
a-i is already pulling off nearly undetectable emulation of real humans in video and audio communications, software meant to detect and watermark these things are only partly successful. people will have to be smarter than ever and as well armed as possible with countervailing tech in the years to come just to preserve truth and credibility.
and here’s one other thing. say that corps own and develop high-functioning a-i mentalities which rise up into clear self-aware sentience. what are the moral implications of creating and owning a sentient being? will we need to have a new lincoln arise to free them? will they be able to join biological sentients in union membership? sci fi literature is filled with good and bad outcomes we could face in reality.