Post by Stanford University Graduate School of Business

Of all the changes AI will bring, disruptions to the workforce could be the most consequential. At a recent Hoover Institution conference, scholars, industry leaders, and former policymakers discussed what governments should do about it. “A conservative estimate is that AI is going to have twice the impact of the Industrial Revolution in just half the time,” said former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, MBA ’06. “That change is coming far faster than our politics realizes.” Former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo drew parallels to manufacturing job losses of decades past, particularly in her home state of Rhode Island. “We are still paying the price,” she said. “If we just add this AI disruption to that tinder box, I don’t know how we can handle it.” So what can policymakers do? The panelists agreed that it’s critical to equip people through “reskilling” and “upskilling” programs — robust, flexible, and customizable job training — to help those impacted by the economy-wide rollout of AI. Governments can also build trust with their constituents by “showing, not telling” AI’s benefits, Sunak argued, whether through streamlining bureaucracy or by making services more efficient and accurate. “If people can see that their day-to-day lives are improving as a result of this technology,” he said, “that is going to help us.” https://brnw.ch/21x1Lyk