WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper, Jim Banks, Maggie Hassan, and Jon Husted introduced the bipartisan AI Workforce PREPARE Act to assess AI’s impact on America’s workforce and make education and job training programs more effective.
“We can’t sit in the backseat while AI transforms our workforce,” said Hickenlooper, Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. “Workers, employers, and educators need a roadmap to understand these new directions. Our bipartisan bill will help deliver that map so that we can leverage AI and make sure American workers lead the way.”
“We have to understand how AI is changing the workforce so we can equip American workers with the skills necessary to stay ahead of China and lead the world,” said Banks.
“There is no question that AI will significantly transform the way we work in the coming years, and it’s important that we have the facts on how our workforce will be impacted and evolve,” said Husted. “America must lead and win the global innovation race, and this bill ensures our workforce not only avoids being left behind, but is prepared to lead the way in developing and using new technology.”
The legislation directs the Department of Labor (DOL) to work with NIST, NSF, and the Census Bureau to create a framework for measuring and forecasting AI’s workforce impacts.
Key provisions would:
- Solicit ideas from the public and convene researchers, technical experts, business, and labor to improve data collection on AI and the workforce
- Enhance the Labor Department’s authorities to hire a core group of AI experts
- Create an AI Workforce Research Hub to help implement the White House’s AI Action Plan
- Carry out a pilot project to produce statistics on workers’ movements between occupations as they are affected by AI
- Increase researchers’ access to the federal government’s workforce data
- Conduct prize competitions to better understand AI adoption, job impacts, labor-market outcomes, and how AI systems augment or automate tasks in particular occupations
- Facilitate voluntary public-private partnerships to share anonymized data on how users are adopting AI
- Improve AI-related questions in federal surveys
- Update the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice (WARN) Act to provide basic information to employees, if AI is a substantial factor in a layoff
- Improve the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ occupational projections
- Produce a report on how better AI forecasts can be incorporated into grantmaking decisions
- Conduct a study on how to design more effective rapid retraining programs to assist workers displaced by AI
“Our workforce is potentially facing a large-scale disruption as AI is integrated in our economy. In order to respond effectively with programs that support workers during an era of unprecedented automation, we need better data. Policymakers need to know what jobs are being eliminated, what new work is being created, and how we can train a workforce prepared for the future,” said Americans for Responsible Innovation President Brad Carson. “The AI Workforce PREPARE Act gets right to the heart of that issue by supporting high-quality economic data collection, analysis, and forecasting on AI’s impact.”
Hickenlooper previously proposed a “Trust, but Verify Framework”, which included a call to establish auditing standards for Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in order to increase transparency and adoption of AI while protecting consumers, and introduced the bipartisan Validation and Evaluation for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (VET AI) Act to do just that.
His VET AI Act directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to work with federal agencies and stakeholders across industry, academia, and civil society to develop detailed specifications, guidelines, and recommendations for third-party evaluators to work with AI companies to provide robust independent external assurance and verification of how their AI systems are developed and tested. He initially introduced the bill in the 118th Congress and helped pass it out of the Senate Commerce Committee last year.
Full text of the bill available HERE.
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