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Hearing runs just over an hour and a half. Its no secret Artificial Intelligence is having a moment in her lives in myriad ways. The workplace is no exception. Just yesterday President Biden signed an executive order focused on ai governance, critical step in our nations overall approach to how we integrate ai to how larger and larger parts of our lives. This is just the beginning. To make sure our workforces position for success, we want to know how ai is being adopted and how ai is being used in the workplace. Is going to help us understand how we can ensure that workers are trained and have sufficient training and their power to maximize the potential of this rapidly evolving technology. According to a recent pew study, nearly 610 workers whenever contacted had interacted with an ai system or application in their workplace, just in the last year. We know that is just the beginning and the number will continue to rise. Ai technology has been a part of our daily lives for years, from our phones text suggestion functions to Search Engines ability to recommend top results. But now, generative ai systems like chatgpt are coming to the stage where they can assist us with writing are emails, making travel plans, quickly analyzing large data sets, even increasing the artwork we surround ourselves with. This technology has the potential to positively alter the way literally all of us work, but i think we have to have an imperative to do it right, to make sure we are not making missteps as we move so rapidly in this direction. I think working together and including workers in that conversation is essential. Maybe thats the most important point we can make today. Many people think of movies where ai replaces humanity. I think the reality in many cases will be that ai will work hand in hand with the workforce, the people who are actually doing the work. Just look at some of the more popular ai applications we are seeing, how they are being used. Chatgpt is great, but it requires input from a worker who has a combination of subject matter expertise and a decent level of ai literacy. Got to be able to get the system clear and direct prompts, be sure it is being directed properly. Youve got to monitor the output for inaccuracies that are not as rare as they hopefully will become. Become. This is what it makes it so important that we make sure that our workers across all industries were active partners in this transition. We should make sure that we help all workers to gain the relevant and essential skill, to gain the training that they will need to be able to succeed in this transition. In some ways, it is a tale as old as time. We do not call plumbers just because the ranch is hard to use. They have mastered how to use that wrench and recognize specific problems. Bob dylan and i both play the banjo. Even if we pluck the same notes, i think you would recognize you would be missing the magic if you are listening to bob, he and any great musician brings a certain order and magic to what they do. No different than what a plumber does when he unravels the most complex issues in your house. Whatever the tools are, workers are using them. Creating the magic. Their skills, their training, is what will make the difference. That is why we have to find a smart Workforce Organization opportunities around ai that are inclusive, they lift up the skills all of our workers to make sure that everyone thrives and has the opportunity to create their own Better Future and their own career. Todays hearing will provide terrific experts who have been considering ai implementation in a variety of contexts. We have direct experience they have direct experience on how to workers are succeeding and the challenges they they face. We walk away with a better understanding of what at integration looks like and what places around different industries, the role of public and private sectors and fostering a high literacy and making sure that the training of the workforce of tomorrow continues unimpeded. What more needs to be done at a federal level to make sure that we all get it right . I think this subcommittee is uniquely positioned to help identify how employers and workers can best understand and maybe more importantly leverage the ai tools that are at our disposal. I think every member in this room wants to make sure that Ai Technology remains a treat, not a trick. [laughter] before i introduce our panel of witnesses i would like to eat animus have unanimous consent , letters from ibm and a letter from the National Security council to be added to the record. No objections . I would like to welcome each of our witnesses for joining us today. The founder and executive director of lactic street, based in tulsa, oklahoma. He is leading the initiative in communitybased approach for technology innovation. He is on the ground with reallife experiences. Josh is the Vice President of productivity technologies at work day from my home state of colorado. He leads a team to production of Technology Products including Ai Technology systems. He has been a leader in adopting ai before people were even talking about ai. The managing director of the organization accenture, one of the leaders in terms of facilitating the acquisition of these skills and necessary deals with ai. She is focused on researching workforce transformations and inclusion in the future of work. I recognize Ranking Member braun to make his opening remarks and introduce our final witness. Mr. Chairman, all of you thank you mr. Chairman and all of you for being here. We come from a unique background, unusual for most individuals in the u. S. Senate, we actually spent a lot of time in the real world before we got here. We ran businesses and we were entrepreneurs by trade. I look at the 37 years that i spent with a little business, it was so hard, 17 years with 15 employees. I had a tiger by the tail when i had to start confronting technology. The extreme cost of that, im talking about dollars spent to get the latest and greatest, we were on radioshack. I can tell you now that we employ a lot of custom coders, a Business Group and a national one with locations in most states. You learn a lot there, i learned to generally always say to my chief Technology Officer which is my older son, my younger son runs the business as the ceo and cfo. We just quit saying no to the latest and greatest technology because we have leveraged it so well to differentiate ourselves from the competition. We are looking at ai. Would you do the same . Being an entrepreneur, when i watched to see whatever is hitting the market across the spectrum, of our economy, i have heard it forewarned by the people that put it out there more than anything i have ever observed in my time of being someone looking for the leading edge, what is the next way to do something . That brings us to an interesting crossroads with something that looks like it can do so much. It can be so beneficial. Also, it looks like the malfeasance that could come from it forewarned by the people that know the most about it should give you pause. I am concerned that we do not smother it. I think we could do that easily. Generally, we over regulate. We get bureaucrats and folks that do not know how to get from here to there in the real world, making all of the rules. We have to be careful about that. What we see it can do and what we are being warned about that it might be used for the wrong purpose. To me, it is the essence of the journey we are on, all i can tell you is we are a lot more productive in my own business. Now that we have the greatest and latest technology. When we were doing orders by hand on the radioshack system, that is why i think in weighing how we get through this we have two err on the side of letting it breathe and show it can do but also take into consideration what the people know the most about it are giving us as a admonition to be careful with it. That is where we are today and as we apply it to how we can use it in the workforce, our economy grows by how much productivity we can leverage on the people that are in it is self and over time we always come into confrontations to where we are worried about what it will do to the economy because it will displace jobs. It can get into areas of creativity, patent trolling, trying to rob people of their creations in other arenas in our economy. There is a lot there to be worried about. I believe that you will have many more in the congress, the key to putting some type of framework of commonsense regulations around it and keeping full in mind we do not want to smother something that could be so beneficial to all of us. I will yield back. Thank you senator. I appreciate that perspective. It is unusual in the sense to have a chair and a cochair of entrepreneurs, not as many entrepreneurs in the congress as there used to be for whatever reason. There needs to be more, dont you think . For our opening remarks, we go from left to right, introducing the next witness. I can do that . You can do that now my pleasure to introduce radford newman, mr. Newman is a litigation partner resident in baker, mckenzies Palo Alto Office and a part of the north american trade secrets practice, he advises and represents the worlds leading technology, banking, professional Service Manufacturing and Commerce Companies in connection with their most significant Data Protection and trade secret matters. That is a lot. Among other subjects, he specializes in ai and he is the chair of the ai subcommittee of the American Bar Association and has been instrumental in proposing federal ai workforce legislation as well as developing ai oversight and incorporate governments, best practices designed to ensure algorithmic fairness. Mr. Newman was also recognized as one of the top 20 ai attorneys in california in 2019. We welcome his expertise to the conversation today. Welcome to you all. I appreciate that. I apologize for slipping and moving. I hit fastforward accidentally. I will start with the opening remarks and we will go down the line. Thank you mr. Chairman. I am appreciative to be on the subcommittee of employment and workplace safety. I am the founder and executive director of black tech street, rebirthing has worked black wall street as an innovation economy and the black americans embrace technology as the wealth building and Global Impact mechanism. I asked myself the question what could black wall street have been had it been supported and not destroyed . When i thought about the level of tenacity it took for these black entrepreneurs to build a businesses during jim crow in my hometown of tulsa, oklahoma, i saw parallels with the Tech Industry and i had an epiphany. Technology is one of the only industries in which intergenerational world is generated wealth is generated, innovation takes place and three, by the year 2030, there are predicted to be as many as 4. 3 one million they get high paying tech jobs due to a tech shortage. After considering these three things are not only saw an incredible wealth building opportunity for black americans, but i saw the black wall street vision push to a new horizon. I surmised that if i had seen black wall street supported it would have been nothing other than the nations premier innovation economy, focusing on cybersecurity, data, and analytics, and Artificial Intelligence, it was founded on the premise that Technology Presents unparalleled economic opportunity. The key is responsible ai. Back in oklahoma we are taking a Community First approach and not relying on big tech to address how ai can be a responsible tool for the benefit of communities and entrepreneurs. To that end, our organization has broken an alliance with microsoft to support 1000 black professionals in tulsa by the year 2030. We have facilitated the participation of over 70 black paulsons in the artist ai teaming individuals and we coled the equitable autonomy consortium that received a u. S. Economic Development Agency regional tech hub designation alongside Tulsa Innovation Labs and the George Kaiser family foundation. We believe all of our work is critical, the conversation around ai is on an entirely different level of urgency. Unofficial intelligence were not just disrupt lives, it will remake the world. Perhaps most urgently, and i will fundamentally transform the workforce which is the lifeblood of any wellfunctioning society. In truth, the workforce is the first area in which we see the power that transforms ai at scale. Whether this be the innovation economy, the creative economy, or many other facet. Whether or not we secure a beneficial arrangement for people in the future of work, we will set a precedent for how ai is administered in all facets of life. The systems for ai end the workforce are designed in a human centered way, it can help marginalized communities or exacerbate preexisting inequities in a way that almost irreparable. To that end i believe there are four critical guidelines that can help us ensure that the future of work built by ai is safe, equitable, and beneficial for the American Worker and economy. One, approach the regulation of ai and the issues that surround in the workforce and more broadly, as a social technical issue. Complex over get a technical issues or problems that resist solution despite repeated attempts or are difficult to describe or predict or not addressed by a Single Organization or in a single intervention and require multiple coordinated interventions. The most critical question in them is discerning where to focus followed by what to do, when, and how. Develop a worker centered ai social contract for the workforce that defines the rules of engagement as they relate to ai and incentivizing ai as a copilot to enhance creativity and output, since the president for policies and systems that define how ai can and should be used as the most critical aspect of the future of work. Instead of what the technology can do. Display a stable framework to unleash Human Potential that leads to better profit and performance for companies. Over index and incentivize training and Education Programs that target people of color and communities that have been historically left and the technological revolution. Four, developed a framework for ai in the future of work in a way that strengthens the intersection between workforce and highgrowth as well as Small Business entrepreneurship. I believe these four Guiding Principles in the inclusion of committees like tulsa will be the utilizing be the catalyst for utilizing ai and empowering the American Economy of the 21st century. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is josh and im the Vice President of productivity technologies at work day workday is a leading provider of applications for finance and human resources. Our software is used by more than 10,000 organizations, servicing over 65 million users. In april of this year nearly one in four of all u. S. Job openings were processed on the workday platform and responsibility we take seriously. Our business gives us the unique Vantage Point an opportunity to shape the future of work. From more than 25 years i have led teams of developers, product managers and researchers that build software that has a trans one how teams should run their business. Ai clearly holds Great Potential in this area which is why i commend the subcommittee for its bipartisan focus on how ai will focus the American Workforce. Technology will change the skills the workforce requires and our teenage daughters see this as an incredibly challenging time to be given career advice. Knowledge is helping them in ways in their schooling i could not have imagined when i was in school. At workday i believed the ai can enable u. S. Workers and employers to better navigate future changes and focused on a skillsbased approach to talent. Today, an employee can use workday ai to identify opportunities for career development, employees can ask for a specific question about their learning and Development Policies and get a clear answer without having to read page after page of documentation all things to ai. As a workday product team integrates ai we strive to put people at the center and enable them to apply their judgment. This requires careful crafting of the workday product experience, so users understand how and when ai is augmenting their work. It is also why workday provides tools that enrich but do not replace human judgment. It is our approach with trust and our users. Workday surveyed 1000 Senior Business leaders about ai and learned there is overwhelming agreement the ai is needed to help their employees work more efficiently and make better decisions. Readers also told us that people lack the skills to adapt to the changing workplace. How do we address the skills gap and putting workers and employers to navigate the coming changes. It is a significant challenge to identify investment skills that are relevant today or recognizing those skills that will change in the future. In workdays view, a skills based approach rather than their credentials is the best way forward. The governors of penn state are embracing such an approach because it provides for rescaling and expands applicant pools. We are pleased to see the new ai executive order acknowledging the importance of skill in a changing workplace. I have seen firsthand in my organization how shifting to a skillsbased approach is impacting our organization, faster hiring and the opportunity to bring on qualified candidates who have been overlooked in the past. To make a shift to a skillsbased approach you need the right mindset and technology. Workday skills uses ai to align skills and using a common vocabulary. With that in place our customers provide online town marketplaces for their employees to find new opportunities and get the skills that they need. A retail associate who is interested in a management position or discover a leadership role that another score and take suggested Online Learning classes to give them the skills they need to apply for the opportunity. Ai can take the guesswork out of Workforce Development and elevate peoples skills. I would like to mention that work believes there are steps the subcommittee can take to promote the transition to a skillsbased approach to talent at a national scale. There is growing awareness with the National Advisory committee about the need to modernize the department of labors reporting current highquality and timely federal data is essential to be able to leverage ai and provide workers and employers with insights. Crafting model Legislation Congress can take to support these efforts. In conclusion, ai will continue to drive change, we are all in on the ability to unlock Human Potential and support a skillsbased approach to talent. We seek to play a constructive role in ai with workforce issues and practices and hope that the subcommittee will see us as a resource to be considered as a path forward. He why. Thank you. Thank you very much. Members of the subcommittee, it is my pleasure to speak to you this morning on behalf of my company. I focus on technology and workforce transformation, social innovation, and inclusion in the future of work. We are a Global Professional Service Organization that helps the world leading businesses build their digital core and transform their operation and accelerate their growth. We have approximately 733,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. We are the largest independent Technology Services firm globally and the top partner of most leading technology companies. Our unique position in the market allows us to identify costcutting trends and concerns in the use of ai and generative ai. Including how they affect the future of work and business. We issued a report with the World Economic forum that provides a structured analysis of the potential impacts of large linkage models on jobs. Our research analyzed over 19,000 individual tasks across 867 occupations. Assessing the potential exposure of each task and large language model adoption. The greater potential of time spent in task showed potential for automation including telemarketers and others. What identified occupations that are more likely to be on commendable like those who are unaffected and a number of new roles that will be created such as Ai Developers, data curators, and ai content creators. Ai will transform the way that we work and estimates of 40 of all working Hours Across Industries will be impacted by Large Language Models like the ones driving the generative ai application such as chatgpt. That does not mean that the generative ai will replace 40 of all working hours. On the contrary, the not be done by humans or by robots they jobs will not be done by humans or by robots but humans enhanced by ai. In addition to aligning on responsible ai frameworks organizations will need to consider workforce impacts in three key ways. First, how ai will impact existing jobs. Second, how can we develop a pipeline of talent to create the ai Power Technologies of the future . And third, what kind of needs it will create. The reality is we do not currently have the workforce we need to fill the jobs of the future. That is why we advise our clients to establish a Skills Foundation tailored to their organization. Deconstruct the work to support human and machine collaboration and rearchitect strategic and operational talent practices. We put this advice into practice. We recently announced a 3 billion investment that will double our data and ai practice from 40,000 to 80,000 people through a combination of acquisitions, new hires, and retraining our current workforce. We have used our friendship programs as critical to our success and adaptability. That is what we invested upscaling our own people and invest heavily in structured, earned, and learned apprenticeships. We have put our skillbased hiring commitment into action by opening nearly half of our entrylevel positions to people who do not have a four year College Degree. The workforce commitments and programs we drive internally are echoed in the way that we serve our clients. Client conversations around the workforce including skillsbased practices, responsible ai and ai fluency are happening every day. Every minute of every day. All too often, ai and the workforce debate turns into a binary one. With the machine welding machine take our jobs . Ill the machines take our jobs . We believe that the focus must be on evolving how we work and unleashing the potential of people as much as we are focusing on the technology. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you this morning out morning and answering your questions. The honorable members of the employment and workplace subcommittee, my name is brad newman, i am a partner with the law firm of Baker Mckenzie were i am a leader of their ai practice. I serve as a chair and cochair of the ai subcommittee of the American Bar Association. Today i am here as a concerned citizen and a parent. I have had the privilege to represent the worlds leading developers of ai and getting behind the scenes at the technology behindthescenes look at the technology. It can improve so many of our lives and the workforce as well as the very serious social downside. I have published extensively on the need for legislative safeguards on the use of ai, i have spoken with the worlds leading data scientists and ethicists and i am familiar with the sides of the regulatory debate. Ai is one area where the federal government should act cautiously, prudently, and fully informed on a bipartisan basis to protect the welfare of society. The existing laws do not adequately provide for the potentially harmful downside of ai in the employment context. Without additional funding and training existing agencies are not fully prepared to oversee and regulate this complex technology. In 2015 i published an article titled the Artificial Intelligence poses a greater risk to ipe than humans do. I published a followup piece titled Society Needs the Data Protection act now. I proposed a comprehensive federal ai legislative framework including addressing ai impacts on the workforce. My articles demand piqued the interest of the senate and crated the draft bill of the ai protection act, i urge this committee to conclude as i have that we need new ai were legislation. Because of the civil rights implications of workplace technologies, and legislation in the employment context is a put in place to begin this journey. Federal legislation should not regulate generally, but should delineate use cases and guardrails. Future legislation must not be create rules and regulations that are so onerous that only the very Largest Developers and users of the technology cannot afford to comply. Creating a de facto monopoly for the largest industry players. A rational, riskbased approach what is sure that all Ai Developers have the resources approach ensures that all Ai Developers have the resources to participate in the ecosystem. The developers of this Technology Want to do the right thing and are eager to work with a Bipartisan Group of federal legislators who get this right. Carefully regulating the use of ai and the employment context is as important as regulating the securities market, our food and drug safety for which we have the fda, however, just as the federal government does not regulate against securities and new drugs, so should the federal government narrow its regulation of ai to known risk factors rather than the technology as a whole. No existing law adequately protects the workforce and the potential Downside Risks of ai employment tools while ensuring that they promote innovation. Developers and users of this Technology Face an increasing patchwork of legislation which creates regulations like those enacted in new york city come with convoluted and unclear roles that will likely prove too expensive for many segments of the User Community to comply with. Incentivizing them to abandon the benefit of ai tools in this use case. The new york city law codifies a misguided onesizefitsall approach to ai regulation that prioritizes limiting the Technology Rather than minimizing or eliminating risk factors the technology poses. It is that is not a desirable outcome. The guardrails should be plainly spelled out in bipartisan federal legislation. Again, chair, Ranking Member, and members of the committee, it is truly an honor to share my perspective on these issues and i welcome the opportunity to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you. I feel comfortable saying i have been to a lot of hearings, but i dont think i can remember being on a panel where i had 4 any of you i could spend an entire day with and hear how you all grew up, how you got to this position, and you all are representing essential, important key factors as we make this important transition. Im already recognizing we are not going to have enough time, so i will just warn the witnesses they will be badgered at some time in the future for additional questions, i am sure. Obviously, creating many of the ai tools across america that america is using, your testimony , you noted that workday stripes, makes every effort to develop products that will enrich and not automate human decisions. In your view, how should employers work with employees as they think about different types of automated decisionmaking . Lets start with that. Thank you, senator. It starts with that point of view that as we say puts the person at the center of the experience. When we think about developing an experience, we think first about the employee and how they are using ai, and we have several principles we want to unpack as far as how you can apply the principle in an automated experience. When you are using ai, bringing someone on board into your organization, promoting them, it needs to be very clear to the user that they are engaging with ai, and that is very critical. Secondly, you need to know how they are passing data into the ai to make the decision. What is the basis of the decision that they are evaluating and looking at . We have learned talking to employees, looking at how they use their product, they have those things in place, they have a better sense of what is happening, they can better apply their judgment to making decisions to apply that into their work environment. That is what gives them the confidence in using the ai system. From the perspective of the employers, they want to know what types of ai is powering the system. They want to know we have evaluated those risks. They want to know we have continued to invest in understanding when ai is used and we treat ai as something customers can opt into, not opt out of. It is the case that 80 of our customers have opted into using our solutions, but that is a conscious choice, so we have to provide a lot of information to substantiate that work. Great. Thank you. I have more questions, but im going to go around the horn first. We are in the beginning stages of what i always think of as the great transition, not just to clean energy, but our worlds are changing simultaneously, but as we do that, we are building the careers of the 21st century. Mr. Billingsley, in your testimony, you allude to help tulsa and i know Oklahoma City better than i do tulsa just because there is a band there called the flaming lips that i listen to occasionally but you allude to how tulsa, specifically the community of greenwood, was left out of the last technological revolution. What lessons can we learn to effectively incorporate ai literacy training into our Workforce Development in smaller, Rural Communities and particularly in my point of view, Small Businesses . Thank you, chairman. I would actually think about speak about greenwood being a microcosm for communities across the country. We know communities of color, particularly underserved ones, are often left out of these psychological revolutions. I think it is critical when it comes to making policy and advising in terms of how we will build infrastructure to ensure ai is something one has access to, we have to over index in communities that have historically been left out because we know ai already has the potential to cause a lot of disruption, but if that is layered on top of a community that already did not have some basic resources and Computer Literacy from a previous technological jump, we could see a worse effect, but thats not to speak of the negative aspects. It is to speak of the positive aspects. Think about the unleash creativity potential that could happen if systems were to evolve specifically around ensuring people in these communities were able to have on ramps to be trained in them and also get jobs in the field. When i say the field, i mean ai as its own vertical, but also Many Industries that we know will last for the foreseeable future. Absolutely. I get that, the overlapping nature of some of our previous technological revolutions or disruptions. They left whole communities behind, and now we run the risk of compounding those gaps. I will turn it over now. We are out of time. I will get back to you guys later, but for now, i will turn over to the Ranking Member. Thank you, mr. Chairman. My first question was going to be about how we do this between the government, state, and local governments. Some of the lower levels of government have gotten out there. I think you have made it clear that we need some sort of template or framework. Is that in a nutshell what you said earlier . It is. The companies that want to use this are being faced with a vexing and increasing patchwork of state and local laws, some of which are promulgated by folks who are less than informed on the technology, the upside risks and the Downside Risks. This is creating a lot of headwinds for those who want to innovate, those who want to responsibly deploy, and those who want to make sure, as my fellow folks here testifying, want to make sure this is done responsibly. Im antiregulation by dna, but this is an area where i think the federal government ought to act responsibly responsibly and prudently and occupy the field so there is a uniform set of rules to do this responsibly that large and Small Companies alike can draw from and make sure they are on the right side of the compliance line while innovating. You referenced something in the house currently. How long has that been there . Was it in the last congress or did it originate in this congress . It made it to discussion, not a formal numbered bill, and it was the 2018 congress, i think the 118th congress . You mean the last congress . That was the 117th. Any other formality on legislation you are aware of . Theres a bunch kicking around, but no. We will take a look at that. You talk about the downside risk. Im going to call it the nefarious use of ai. Could you give me your top three biggest concerns, both domestically and internationally in terms of what that might be . In the employment context or generally . Im talking more broadly now. I think ai could be used nefarious lee and will be by state actors to influence domestic issues. I think there will be a lot of fakes of voice and image. I think ai will be used to interfere with our elections and promulgate cyber attacks. Those are the most National Security points of concern in my view ex the workplace. Glad we got it on record because we hear a lot about it and a lot of times it is just referred to generally. Thank you. You intrigued me, he worked for accenture. You mentioned that workforce is such a big deal. In a place like indiana, we have inherently low unemployment rates. Have are your counties are trying to find the next act. The idea of Getting Better skills while you are in the place where everyone goes to school, k12. How did you see that i thought you mentioned you will have entrylevel positions in your own company that dont require 4year degrees. Is that true and would you elaborate on that . Yes, thank you. We have multiple ways to come into accenture. Half of our entrylevel positions or almost half do not require a fouryear degree currently. We hire 20 of our entrylevel positions through our apprentice program. We have had 2000 apprentices since 2016. We also do a bunch around a prints networks across the country. We dont have one in indiana yet, but chicago is our founding apprentice network, but we encourage other employers to join us in building apprentice work and learn programs. Additionally from an access and onramp perspective, we work with organizations to provide our perspective on technology and ai fluency to inform how they are developing their learning and training program. You mentioned, too, that you were going to increase how many employees do you have currently . We have 733,000 employees globally. You mention from going 40,000 to 80,000 with an ai focus. Yes, sir, data and ai. So you get a bump of 5 , 10 employment on that and a large percentage of those will be you come out of high school with the right aptitude, you can come and apply for a job and get one . Yes. I think that is an amazing statistic from a company like accenture that i would have just assumed it would have taken a fouryour degree. My daughter actually worked there for four or five years. Now at the company that i build, she and her two brothers are running it, but i think that is something we need to shout out. College educations are getting so expensive and the statistic i see is only 35 require. What you are doing to me emphasizes how important a k12 education is, teaching reallife skills for a multitude of uses once you graduate from high school. I will heal back. I will yield back. Quick thanks very much. Before i start my questions, i wanted to ask unanimous consent that a statement be entered into the record from matthew sherer, the promise and peril of ai in the workplace. Is dated today. I asked consent to make that part of the record. Without objection. Thank you very much. As Congress Considers Artificial Intelligence and the future of work, it is critical we focus on workers voices and ensure that workers have a seat at the table when policies are made and decisions are made being made that impact workplaces in such a significant way. As the power imbalance in workplaces continues to grow, employers are increasingly willing to use workplace technologies like ai as well as invasive surveillance technologies that will allow them to track workers almost like pieces of equipment. Decisions are being made solely by Employers Without consultation or input from workers, and thats why i have introduced several bills aimed at creating a muchneeded set of rules, standards, protections, and oversight to counter the risks of workplace technologies that are spreading unchecked. This july, i introduced the nothe robot thoughts the norobot bot act. It would require employers to disclose when and how these systems are being used. It would also create guardrails around how ai can damage workers. A second bill is the stop spying bosses act, senate bill 262, that i introduced in february 2 required disclosures and prohibitions for employers engaging in surveillance of workers. American workers are the back of your country, and they deserve to be treated with basic dignity at work. Im hopeful that these bills and other actions we take will help empower and protect workers, and i will continue to fight for those protections and rights. Do you agree that the rise of ai has created both novel and unaddressed issues in the American Workforce and particularly with respect to in both the autonomy of an dignity of the American Worker and that it requires both study and appropriate rules of the road . I agree with you 100 , senator. Thank you. I hope we can Work Together on legislation and other policies related to workers. Mr. Chairman, thats all i have. I will give back all my time. Great. Thank you. Thank you and i think the panel for being here today. If businesses are aware of it or not, many existing services that they use have had ai integrated into it for years. As this technology further develops and the public has greater access to tools like generative ai, how can businesses evolve to best leverage this technology . Thank you, senator. It is true there has been a breakthrough around the use of Artificial Intelligence in the last year and sort of a greater Awareness Among people from all walks of life about what it means from employers and workers we talk to. I think it paramount that businesses are very transparent with their efforts in this area. It is one of the reasons we believe not only in putting in place riskbased frameworks but sharing what we are doing as an industry is so important. We hear more and more interest from people who are both workers at companies and employers in understanding exactly how we are employing ai and for what ends. When we provide a level of transparency, the more we can do that in a standardized way, i think we will get more confidence and trust built around the use of ai, and i think fundamentally, that is what this is about. It will take time for people to build trust and confidence in these systems, and if you are not transparent with the ways you are leveraging ai, you will not be successful getting people comfortable and getting the most out of this technology. Workday is a very wellknown company, but it is most thought of as more enterpriselevel. What would you suggest for Small Businesses to more quickly adopt ai . Thank you, senator. In my experience, taking an open mind towards experimentation while having an eye towards risk. There are a lot of great resources. There are emerging skills that surround ai that are coming up. As we have talked about so far in the testimony, availing yourself of the online resources around responsible language models, prompt sharing are all valuable. We do a lot of pretty informal training on how best to use Ai Technologies to make decisions and just driving a conversation around that. Technology in the workplace really elevates the discussion and allows us to embrace the technology. We also encourage a skeptical attitude. Try to break it, see if it really works in a practical sense. When you get a Comfort Level with people using the technology, it is pretty amazing. Finally, i will say watching my daughter go to school and come back using the tools in her classes, it is interesting seeing in the last year professors switching to a mindset of saying, we expect you to use these tools, just disclose how youre using them. Use them in a meaningful way. Thank you. In the coming years, and regulation will have a difficult challenge in congress and federal agency. Already, the union has proposed classifying Ai Technology according to a 4tier risk system. Californias governor has tasked agencies to report on the risk of ai, including those called workforce displacement. I think the federal government should tread carefully when considering new regulations in any format. I appreciate your sentiment in your dna, and i think that is particularly true with a cutting edge industry. What impact could these early attempts at regulation have on the development of Ai Technology . I think we are seeing it in the state and local level in a patchwork of various approaches. It can be viewed as antiinnovative. It can raise the cost. It can fuel litigation. It can create barriers to responsible adoption. A lot of developers are scratching their heads asking what do i have to do in california . What do i have to do in new york city . Should we be in new york city if that is what we have to do . That is the opposite of what we want as a society. We want clarity, efficiency, rational regulation, and we are creating a hodgepodge of anticompetitive, antiinnovation catch or catchcan all over the country. Thank you all again for being here. Thank you, chairman. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here. At least three of you, your testimonies really focused on workforce issues. Mr. Newman, you really get into how to conceive of the regulatory challenge. I really want to focus on the workforce side, not to ignore those issues. Mr. Landon, i will refer to your written testimony. We believe in a skillsbased approach to talent. I read mr. Billingsleys testimony about the need to over index education assessment and training and communities representing people of color. You talk about apprenticeship programs and some of the things you are doing. How do we deal with the workforce and look at what it is to be educated and ready to succeed in an ardominant economy aidominant economy . We are woefully behind at the federal level. Senator braun and i are cosponsors of a bill that has been before the senate for nine years. It will allow pell grant to be used for career and Technical Training and not just college. It has virtually a zero cost. It has had about six members currently serving of the senate as cosponsors or at one time or another. Most recently we had been on the list for markup in the committee but there were two other bills being marked up that day that were controversial, so the entire markup was pulled down, and what we expected to be essentially a unanimous vote from the Committee Never happened. It has not yet been scheduled for another markup. Meanwhile, all of my employers are telling me they are having a hard time hiring people. We just did a manufacturing bill. We just did an infrastructure bill. You have testified significant percentages of your employees dont need College Degrees. And yet, we offer to families whose kids want to go to college or whose parents want their kids to go to college a significant financial entitlement and incentive, but for a family that wants to have a youngster, in tulsa for example, master skills that does not require a College Degree, we dont necessarily provide easily accessible Financial Aid for that family or for that student. It seems to me to be a nobrainer. I agree with you, mr. Landon. We really are moving to sort of skills rather than credentials. Sometimes the best credentials are a validator of skills. Somebody who passed the American Welding Society exam, they can take that anywhere in the country. They may not know what high school you attended, but they know what an aws certification is. A credential can be a validation of your ability to succeed in this area, but i would like to throw it open to you. We set federal education policy, including how we incentivize students and their families to learn. I think we ought to incentivize college attendance, but i dont think we should suggest that college is the only way for someone to successfully learn and be productive in this economy. I would love any of your comments on that. Yeah, thank you, senator. Could not agree more. I hope with the looming transformation of ai, we can use as impetus for taking action now at the congressional level. I would say, like accenture, we have had a lot of success with our opportunity onramp program. 20 of our hires this year will come from a program that works with nonprofits to provide skillbased training for people at work day for sixmonth internships that are paid transitioning to fulltime hires at our company. People dont have to come from a background where they had the opportunity to get a College Degree or maybe they are midwife or a veteran and coming as a caregiver, and having that skillbased orientation and mindset is so beneficial to us as an organization. I do think we share that with some other panelists. Absolutely. I would draw a parallel between something we are actually doing in tulsa. We are trying to tackle a similar issue inside the security industry. We have some nontraditional programs like cyber skills but also the sixmonth boot camp we use to connect people with a print and shifts with apprenticeships. We should see something similar as it relates to the infrastructure around education and certification with Artificial Intelligence, but another thing we should consider is communitywide use case training. One of the best ways for people to understand the power of Artificial Intelligence, specifically in different areas of the workforce, is for them to get handson experience, seeing how effective it can be as a copilot for them. One of the things we have worked on designing in partnership, how do you go into a community and take some critical areas, workforce areas, and get the community to use not just chatbots but other areas of ai for grant writing, community development, social and criminal justice. We can provide realworld examples of how people can use ai to enhance and improve their output in their career. That is a perfect way to get initial exposure before you plug them into a preset infrastructure. Yes, i echo again my fellow panelists here. Mr. Billingsley also is speaking to the overall ai and technological fluency we need to be driving at the broadest level, sort of exposing people not only to the career, which i think has been discussed quite a bit, but the technology in the context that is a treat and not a trick. We want people to see what the value is within their own context, within their own incentives and environment, and that comes back to what everybody has said so far today, which is centering the human or the person as a part of this conversation. To your question on workforce preparedness, accenture is very much in line with you around providing opportunities, if it is not a Degree Program or even credential, but really driving technology and ai fluency in a variety of ways, which could be through workbased learning, onthejob, or with k12 education. Thank you for the question. Thank you so much. I healed i healed i yield back. That is a great question. They are all great questions. It is our prerogative to continue the questioning. When you saw no other senators come in, perhaps you breathe a sigh of relief, but you should not. Hold that sigh. What we have seen with a lot of questions and responses as the balance between risk and opportunity that ai poses, and i think i feel that we have an alliance of people that are more excited by the opportunity, not that we dont have to be aware of the risk, but that the opportunity is so exciting. Senator braun talked a little about Small Businesses. I want to make sure that Small Businesses see the excitement of opportunity here, you know, having ways to train workforce. Again, i was so impressed that almost half your entrylevel jobs dont require College Degrees. When i was in colorado, we spent years going through almost every job in the State Government and found that almost half of them we could not justify the College Degree that was being required. We got rid of it. There was a lot of pushback on that, and i think that allowing Small Businesses to be able to see what you guys have clearly seen, it is really about the skills. How can we ensure that ai education, this fluency you describe and the Workforce Development opportunities are current so that witnesses of all size can get excited about it . Thank you for the question. I think it starts again in the k12 exposure because people are using this technology. One of the things we have learned from small, medium, largesized businesses that we serve now is that the youngest people are often having two computers up, right . The computer that is their work computer and the computer they have ai applications running on pure young people in general i would say are already using these applications, and for a Small Business, i think the presumption should be they are going to be bringing the knowledge and formed around how this technology works. I think the importance for Small Businesses is that they are, to your point, driving fluency, leveraging what is available from i would say trusted organizations in this space from a learning perspective. Theres organizations that i think Small Businesses can look to to say, ok, what should our governance or our policy is an organization be . And this is not over burdensome because you have something you can reference. The second piece is looking at what is available from trusted organizations, and i would have to come back to you with a vision statement about with a written statement around that. Learning is essentially free if you can find the right places for it. I think it is kind of twofold. Leveraging the existing frameworks and the existing work that organizations have done but then also leveraging public learning in that space would be a start. You are exactly right. The democratization of learning and education. The ceos of walmart, starbucks have said, we will share all of our ip for training and skills acquisition if you can find a way to do that efficiently and fairly and have a system where you have lifetime of apprenticeship opportunities. Kids of all ages could get stackable credentials. I think ai really helps. As an individual, i own the rights to the domain name myshot. Com, which i bought about seven years ago when hamilton had just come out. I dont think vindman will miranda lynnmanuel linm anuel miranda will ever let me use the song. We look at the resources that Ai Technologies can create, all these positives, and that ai will impact each workplace differently, so it will be important to make sure employers can access these. As these transitions are going so quickly, the potential that ai can be a tool to take intellectual property and violate the cost the creation of that capital, what do you imagine are some of the solutions that would protect companies in that situation . Coming from silicon valley, i think we place a premium on ip protection, and i think ai is a tool in the threat actors arsenal to try through cyber or other means to implicate inculcate and compromise intellectual property, which is the bedrock of our nations innovation. I think there does need to be a hard look at the ip protection afforded around ai. I think on the domestic side and nonNational Security side, there is now a large debate about copyright holders should be given compensation if their copyrighted work is used in a data training set or an algorithm. I think that cries out for a model where there is a marking of copyrighted works and some statutory compensation to copyright holders. That is an aigenerated issue with intellectual property, and this really gets me to the point where what worries me is the state and local regulators who dont have the time and resources to delve into this area and understand technology, understand the legal issues, understand the worker versus management. All of these considerations are important, and thats why i think ai cries out for a uniform solution in most if not all domains because it is the federal government that is uniquely conditioned with its resources and the folks who are serving in the federal government to take the time to understand the issues we are just exploring today, and i think we are going to have a better, bipartisan resolution that meets all of the varying constituents legitimate needs if the federal government acts versus the state and local patchwork we are getting in every aspect of ai. I think it is detrimental to both sides of the debate. Thank you. Workday has only been a company for 18 years, it looks like, started in 2005. Financial planning, hr. A lot of companies started then. When did you start incorporating ai into what you do as a company and the consulting you give to others . Thank you, senator. Yes, it has been an amazing 18year ride for the company. I think it was interesting for us because we were one of the First Companies to the cloud, and at the time, that was very new for the type of work we were doing, and there were a lot of questions from customers about is the data secure. Some of the bedrock principles we had at the start of the company hold true, especially in 2019. I think we all understand the cloud now. When did you actually formalize the use of ai into your own company and what you advised others . I want to follow up to make sure this does not predate the data im going to give you, but 2018, 2019 was the time we started developing machinebased learning algorithms and also when we started working on what would become a lot of the riskbased management framework to go along with that work. You are on the leading edge of it, so that is 32 4, maybe five years, and the distance we have traveled, that is amazing. It begs the question, since you are on the leading edge of it, and we generally always hear about what good comes from it, are there any examples where even in your own company or with businesses that have incorporated it, have gotten ahead of their skis and had issues with it . None of significance, but i think we are still leaning into a prevailing concern with our experience that we could introduce risk, especially in terms of bias and discrimination into the workplace. I think that is most pronounced for us as we start to evaluate some of these generative Ai Technologies. One of the things that a lot of our first generation ai was good at, predicting financial numbers, doing math, the payroll add up the low hanging fruit . The low hanging fruit. Now we are talking about ai systems that can write Business Contracts business documents, evaluate contracts. I daresay we are on the cusp of all the potential that might be good ahead of us, but a lot of the potential issues, which would beg kind of a general Regulatory Framework are just coming to the surface. I think that is true, and i agree. We are a company very accustomed to working in regulatory environments with a lot of different compliance regimes. We are comfortable with that, but it really hurts when you have a mishmash of different approaches, and having something uniform at a National Level would allow the u. S. To take leadership in this area. It is important as a lot of our businesses operate at a global level. Having a simplified set of regulations, the more benefit we will have, and those benefits will accrue to all businesses. When you take what we just talked about there and relate it to entrepreneurs wanting to capitalize on it, we have seen cryptocurrency being something a little bit amorphous recently in terms of the volatility of the, number one. What is your concern about everything we discussed here in terms of entrepreneurs who generally are a little less riskaverse plowing into a field where they would, you know, want to build a company when there are so many inherent uncertainties around it now . Thank you for the question. I think this is why the conversation around workforce is critical. We talk about how you are going to use ai to if it is going to be the bedrock of a new economy, in a lot of ways, some of the bedrock are entrepreneurs letting a certain skill and then they branch out and start companies. When you talk about riskaverse entrepreneurs, yes, some will jump up and create the correct framework for people to learn and train with ai in the workforce or actually train more responsible people who have more fluent skills in terms of ai. When they start aienabled businesses and companies, they can use them for responsibly and effectively because they will have the Reference Point of what they learned and how they saw it administrated when they were in the workforce. I look back to the dotcom craze and look at the number of companies that flamed out in a short period of time back then and look at how important that has been in terms of woven into almost every aspect, so i think that was a lot less concerning than, but when you do get a hot new technology, entrepreneurs, generally not being riskaverse, it looks like more potential pitfalls than what we would have had two decades ago. Absolutely. That is the inherent nature of how ai should be approached. When you have a tool, two kids hitting each other with pillows is one thing, but if they end up having an actual weapon, the amount of times you have to get it wrong is one. When we think about specifically highgrowth companies degrading ai and end up using it for solutions that are critical, if it is loan applications and critical decisions, you dont have very many times to get it right before it becomes a serious problem. The reference and initial framework is more critical than it has ever been. Thank you. Senator kaine. Thank you, mr. Chair. First, i was intrigued with one aspect of your testimony that was cryptic and unexplained. I think i know what you mean, but i wanted to ask you about it. Im not part of any lobbying special interest or industry group. I am here as a concerned citizen and father. Why did you throw father into your testimony . I have five children and the world they are coming into will be impacted from a 24hour cycle, asleep, awake, all the way back to sleep by ai, and i am concerned. I know firsthand the tremendous upside ai offers in every use case, including the workforce. Again, my dna, and antiregulation, but ai from what ive seen behindthescenes from those developing it and innovating it, they meanwhile. They are doing the best they can , but this is an area for the health, welfare, and safety of society. I believe the federal government ought to provide rules of the road. It sounds like in your testimony, reading it, but also listening to the q a, your belief in federal regulation is justified by two pillars. One is there would be danger of differing statelevel regulatory schemes that could choke off innovation, that could create huge problems for development of this industry, that could put us at a strategic disadvantage with other nations, so the one justification for a federal framework is to avoid complexity and contradictory statelevel regulation, but the second level is on the more affirmative side, you think that there are more aspects where we could advance good and put up guardrails against bad by doing the federal regulation. One item in the third page of your testimony where you go over the your five points about the different sections intrigue me. Section 202 creates a federal Worker Realignment Program to aid individuals displaced by ai by training such individuals for alternative careers and helping such individuals find employment opportunity. We have an analog to that in trade adjustment assistance. For a long while, we have had federal programs to focus resources on individuals and communities if trade is disrupted, something they counted on as a pillar of the economy. Until i read your testimony, i had not heard someone suggest the same thing for those displaced by technological advancements. My experience as a governor before i got here is that more people lose jobs to Technology Changes that to trade, but with trade, there is somebody you can blame. You can blame the person who negotiated the trade deal. A job has gone overseas, there might be a plant with a lock on it. We dont really want to blame technology because we all like carrying around the latest version of these, so we tend not to focus so much on the dislocations of the workforce caused by technology, but i thought that was an interesting proposal. I found it to be a creative one. Do you want to expand on that . Yeah. I have had this debate with many a folk on are we luddites and will there be more jobs created and, yes, there will be some jobs created, but let me take my profession as an example, and maybe it is a good thing, but there will be less lawyers. There is tremendous private equity and Venture Capital being deployed to create ai solutions in the law, and they will be amazingly effective in doing things better than a human can do in the law. With our rule of law system, we always see humans, and theres going to be in my view, you dont want ai judges, ai juries, but in the daytoday practice, there will be less lawyers, less paralegals, and there will not be reentry into the workforce for a lot of these folks with their skill set, so i do come out on the side that ai is fundamentally different than all that has come before, and the impact on the workforce will be different, and there will ultimately in my view be dislocation on a different level than we have seen before, and i do think one aspect is the federal government is eventually going to legislate this, not only providing for Something Like a chief ai officer and the necessity for one and having an ai board like we have the fcc, the fda, etc. , or the nlrb or eeoc, but i think we are going to need a Worker Retraining Program that is federally funded that allows workers of various skill sets to have a way to reenter the workforce in some way if they are displaced by ai. Mr. Billingsley was emphatically nodding his head yes on that point. I think that is an important thing for us to hear. I appreciate it. Great question. I appreciate the answer. I know im standing between you and freedom and perhaps your lunch. Your statement that Technology Today feels like its happening to people, not for them. What does your research indicate the skills that people are seeking out to help them understand ai and how can adequate skill training help workers to regain and restore their sense of trust in the workplace . Thank you for that question. I think my answer will have two parts. We focus a lot on the hard skills. What does this technology do . How can i use it . What accenture found is that it is just as important to have what i would call the support to build a culture of learning, right . Growth mindset, selfefficacy, agency for that learner to have choice as to say what job will be their next job and giving them the opportunity to make that choice. The hard skill piece but also recognizing what we know about human behavior, cognitive science and neuroscience about how people learn so that we provide opportunities and Training Programs and learning programs that allow and are based in that knowledge. Absolutely. I would echo those sentiments. In my community, we have a saying, what you do for me without me you do to me. That is often the entire approach of these technological revolutions or, to be frank, sometimes when regulation is handed down. I think this is also an opportunity to take a farmore communityfocused approach when it comes to not only figuring out what are the right decisions to make but how it will actually affect people in real time. Engaging workers, Engaging Community members, and exposing them to this technology, to go back to that point, exposing them to this technology on two different tracks, one framed on how they might apply it to the workforce, but another that is more general that helps people, specifically in communities of color, many of whom have a really terrifying view of ai, that gets them to develop a culture that they are more comfortable with it, they can adopt it, but also they can see using it as a remedy to many of the stumbling blocks they have faced in workforce or every day life. The culture we build around ai is equally as important as the technology. Most people are on the fringes and are unable to influence how the Technology Actually works. That is where most of the energy needs to go, and it needs to be human and peoplefocused. All right. Got that. We all have a vested interest in protecting the rights of workers, especially civil rights, and you were talking about this universal opportunity for retraining. All of you have said a version of that along here. In your experience, what are some of the factors that should that employers should way, should be thinking about when considering when thinking about ai implementation to make sure workers are included and at the same time protected, but really more included i think is what mr. Billingsley was saying. Thank you, mr. Chairman. The framework that all companies should aspire to who deploy ai, large or small, is to have either by name or the equivalent a chief ai officer, and one of their responsibilities will be to educate and disclose transparently to the workforce what ai systems are being used in the workplace that can affect your hire, your fire, your promotion, job selection, etc. By being transparent in that way as one facet of the chief ai officers job, it takes a lot of the fear and uncertainty away and the workforce can see they are not being treated unfairly by ai because they understand what is happening. It is the black box approach. We think the use of an eye out to be disclosed so workers can understand what is happening. Excellent point made. Every one of you could have answered every one of these questions. Such a great panel. There are a number of ways that ai can enhance workplace processes. You have all describe them. Promote efficiency to make workers more productive, make their lives easier in many cases. This could go too far. We run the risk of relying too much on ai. Potentially. I think it is potentially at the expense of human decisionmaking. It atrophys. How are developers seeing the need to balance ai without losing sight of the critical decisionmaking capability . When we think about developing ai into our products, we need to think about outcomes we are going to achieve as part of that process. Will it impact the hiring we are doing . Will it impact another part of the workforce . We understand the outcomes. We understand where human judgment comes to play most. We can think about ai as the copilot that allows folks to be informed in their judgment. It starts with assessing the key parts where we rely on that fundamental ability to make good decisions and augment them as sort of a foundation point. Yes, ai will show up in nondescript ways. Recommend a song, thats pretty innocuous, but there are many places in the work we do where human decisionmaking matters. Thats a great point around the legal profession, for sure. We want our judges and jurors to be human beings applying their judgment, so i think that analogy holds for all kinds of different professions, and i think about what is the outcome we are driving and if you think holistically about that, these are the places we need to keep people at the center. Great. More questions . All right, i think not that im out of questions, but i think i will back off at the moment. I cannot thank you all enough. I think this has been so illuminating in so many ways, and i feel so optimistic. Not that there are not serious risks that you guys have all laid out, and i am an optimist. These days, you cannot be in government if you are not somewhat of an optimist. I come away from this feeling more hopeful than fearful. Anyway, that will end our hearing today. I would like to thank the colleagues who are here and watching on zoom. I want to thank each of our witnesses. Again, words cannot express how much i appreciate having such a wide arc of experience to help us work through this stuff. For any senators that wish to ask additional questions or have questions they want to ask today , questions for the record will be due within 10 business days, so on tuesday, november 15 at 5 00 p. M. So ordered. The committee now stands adjourned. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org]

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