New group headed by former governors promises national AI workforce ‘people strategy’
A workforce initiative launched Thursday by two former governors aims to prepare employers for an economy increasingly centered around artificial intelligence technologies.
The program, called RAISE US, is being led by Gina Raimondo, the former Rhode Island governor who served as Joe Biden’s commerce secretary, and Eric Holcomb, a Republican who served two terms as Indiana’s governor. According to a press release, the new group will “partner with governors, employers, workers, and training organizations to help the American workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy.”
Transitioning to an AI economy will reportedly include the “design and pilot new corporate incentives to retrain and redeploy workers, new approaches to support people through job transitions, and new training models tied to changing employer demand.”
The initiative claims partnerships with Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland and Utah, aimed at developing “concrete programs,” such as one in Arkansas that connects students and jobseekers to careers.
The new program also boasts of its corporate partnerships, such as with Amazon, Anthropic, Bank of America, Microsoft and the OpenAI Foundation. According to press materials, the organization has so far secured more than $500 million in commitments.
Raimondo, who will serve as the group’s chief executive, said the group will organize a bipartisan “people strategy” to be integrated with the nation’s AI ambitions: “If we build the best AI systems in the world and leave millions of Americans behind, we won’t have won anything; we’ll have automated our own decline. I believe AI will create new jobs and industries over time, but the transition could be disruptive, and it’s already underway. We shouldn’t fearmonger, but we can’t pretend our training and worker support systems are ready either. It’s time for innovative and practical solutions.”
