Amid all the uncertainties about the societal impacts of the rise of AI, one thing is clear—workforce development programs will have to change, and likely change dramatically, to meet the yet-uncertain needs of post-AI employers.
“AI is changing just about everything,” said Mark Schneider, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “We don't know if it's going to take days, weeks, hours or years, but lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff is going to be changed. We don't know if the outcomes are going to be bad or good or mixed—probably all of the above. But we know that change is coming.”
Schneider moderated a panel at AEI on Monday— “The Future of Workforce Training in the AI Era”—that explored how AI might impact workforce training and what educational and training institutions, as well as employers and parents, should be doing now to get ready for it.
A consistent theme was moving quickly to train and prepare students for the jobs AI is least likely to disrupt. Educators and workforce specialists should not be looking to “how do we re-skill people, but how do we pre-skill people,” said Matt Sigelman, president, Burning Glass Institute. “How do we start to identify now what are the talent communities that are at greatest risk? How do we start to make sure that they have awareness of some of the other potential opportunities?”
In the view of one panelist, it may already be too late to meaningfully mitigate the coming employment disruption from AI. Stuart W. Elliott, a senior analyst at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, said his research suggests that there will be little-to-no market for entry-level cognitive workers by 2030 and the same for entry-level physical workers by 2040, forcing societies to radically re-envision the concept of work and establishing a universal basic income to provide for the bulk of citizens.
Other panelists saw a post-AI employment sector where there are wrenching changes, but where college, community college and vocational students can be prepared to either be qualified for more physical work that AI is less likely to dominate, or to be sufficiently fluent with AI to use it to increase productivity in more cognitive-focused fields.
Sigelman said high schools can start by more forcefully identifying for students where the jobs are—and they are often in fields that don’t require a four-year college degree—and which have the best hopes for advancement and stable employment.
“The key thing to bear in mind here, by the way, is those starting jobs are so important because they set students on a path. It's not so much that the jobs themselves pay better, but they are much more likely to lead to onward economic mobility,” Sigelman said.
Scott Ralls, the president of Wake Tech Community College in North Carolina, said his institution is seeking to meet the AI challenge in three crucial ways:
- Threading AI awareness and expertise throughout the entire curriculum, in teaching styles and practices, and in how the college operates.
- Creating AI literacy, not just in IT-focused fields, but in all subject majors and throughout a student’s experience.
- Investing in AI-related innovation in everything from student assessment to creating workforce simulation centers.
“I'm really excited about what AI can mean in terms of creating a much more realistic workforce education world for many of the workforce of the future,” said Ralls.
Michael Hendrix, policy director for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, said he believes the case for mass unemployment as a result of AI is being overstated and that AI instead “will come to be bolted on to existing processes and products and figuring out how to make that work will require skilled people. And meanwhile, the physical world, where most people actually work today, isn't going to be automated anywhere near the pace as the digital world."
Said Hendrix: “The states that have invested in the fundamentals, literacy, technical training, employer connected credentials, and on and on and on, will turn out to be the best position.”