May 09, 2023 At 11:05 AM EDT
Newsweek recently welcomed eight high school students—from Denver, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.—onto The Debate podcast for a series of special episodes, as part of the publication's new partnership with the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL). These recordings were done in anticipation of the students taking part in a live debate on April 14 at Newsweek's global headquarters in New York City's One World Trade Center.
The event signaled the beginning of an ongoing content initiative for Newsweek called Mightier, which covers youth debate and asks students to weigh in on some of society's most pressing issues.
The following excerpt, which has been lightly edited, is transcribed from a podcast debate on how the government could best handle the issue of workers losing their jobs due to automation and artificial intelligence. In the excerpt, debater Erick Zaragoza from the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League advocates for government-funded re-skilling for workers impacted by AI-driven layoffs. The full argument can be heard on Newsweek's The Debate podcast, below:
I [will] explore the idea of government-funded re-skilling of workers, which is the ideal solution to combat job loss due to automation.
The crux of the problem is that workers who are being displaced by AI don't have the skill sets that translate to working in AI. In other words, there is a discrepancy between the skill set of the workers who are being displaced and the skill set of the workers needed.
Despite job loss, the World Economic Forum asserts AI will create 97 million new jobs by 2025.
Historically, programs back in the Roosevelt administration helped put Americans back on their feet. This worked, at the expense of government spending. Take, for example, the Works Progress Administration, which used American labor to build infrastructure that has largely had a positive impact on society.
Imagine being able to wait in a virtual queue for the DMV rather than killing an entire Saturday. Any government website ever is behind the current standard. Think about the logistics optimization that can occur in government bureaucracies as a result of these new technologies.
The general use case for a government-backed re-skilling program goes beyond AI and automation, considering the volatility of the technology sector, like right now.
The point I'm trying to drive here is that an AI-centric world is inevitable. So it makes sense to teach workers how to maneuver that system for the sake of efficiency. Build a website instead of a barn, or build a barn if you'd like, just as long as Americans have jobs, right?
I mean, considering the COVID pandemic, which started in March of 2020, people had to rapidly pick up computing skills contingent on many workers being able to complete their job successfully online.
The reason I call for a program at the scale of the New Deal is that people are going to be forced to adapt to a new system just like they did under COVID, and it wouldn't be the same time constraints as the pandemic.
When we consider automation taking over jobs, it's gradual development that comes as a result of the promise of better, faster and cheaper labor as opposed to humans.
An argument against this approach hearkens back to the age-old debate about the deficit and whether or not increasing government spending is a good or bad thing. If we do nothing, Americans lose job sectors, which is a catastrophic outcome for the economy.
If we spend government money, we can transfer those jobs while increasing the GDP and the strength of our economy overall.
Without wanting to quibble about the politics of budgeting, it makes sense that we invest resources to adapt to this new technological era and be prepared for the effects it might have on the economy with the overall goal of Americans being able to transition seamlessly into this new era of AI automation.
Teaching people technological skills is something that's going to have to happen eventually.
This is a problem that's going to snowball in the future. So it's best that we prevent it now by making sure that people are able to face these new technologies with the skills that they need to be able to find a job in the sector, right? Because the truth is they're going to be displaced in the current jobs they have now.
Banking on the idea of entrepreneurship and innovation with the form of universal basic income is a risk that I'm not entirely sure would be worthwhile for the U.S. government to take.
So I think for that reason, I would have to put forth my plan that increasing automation due to AI should be addressed by bracing our existing system for change in the form of having re-skilling programs by the U.S. government to make sure that people have the skills needed to adapt to the new technological climate.
The views expressed in this article may not necessarily reflect the personal beliefs of the author.
