Google rushes to Washington to promote AI employment plan before legislation: train 40k workers, collaborate with hundreds of companies to establish apprenticeship programs

ME News message. On April 14 (UTC+8), according to monitoring by 1M AI News, Google today convened representatives from government, the business sector, and civil society in Washington to discuss AI and employment, while also simultaneously announcing three AI skills training programs:

• In partnership with the Johnson Foundation, providing tools to reduce paperwork for rural medical institutions to address labor shortages in the healthcare industry;
• In collaboration with the nonprofit organization Jobs for the Future, jointly launching a new apprenticeship program with 100 companies;
• In partnership with the Manufacturing Institute, training 40,000 workers in AI skills, and expanding the apprenticeship program to 15 new regions across the United States.

At the meeting, MIT researcher Ben Armstrong (funded by Google) will release a study exploring how companies can use AI to cut employees’ repetitive back-office work and promote internal collaboration.

Google Chief Economist Fabien Curto Millet said, “AI is not something that happens to us—it’s something we can shape.” The company has indicated support for multiple bipartisan legislations regarding workforce nurturing/training and employment impact data collection.

A clearer signal than the training programs is that Google has gathered all parties together before launching AI employment legislation in Congress, proactively putting its policy framework on the table.

The stance of the United States’ largest labor federation AFL-CIO is completely different: its spokesperson Steve Smith said that any AI strategy centered on workers must be grounded in protecting workers’ right to form unions; otherwise, “they can only leave it up to the CEO to decide how to deploy AI.” AFL-CIO is currently pushing for AI labor legislation focused on actions at the state level.

(Source: BlockBeats)