AI is Pulling The Career Ladder Up. We Still Have Time to Act.

When I’m talking to Michiganders about AI, the same questions come up again and again:

What about my job? What about my kid’s job?

Americans are already being roiled by this disruption. Law firms are using AI to do the document review that used to be done by first-year associates. Warehouses are using autonomous mobile robots to move heavy pallets. Investment banks are using it for the modeling that used to be done by analysts. Consulting firms, accounting firms, tech companies, agriculture — all using AI to do the work that used to be done by the people just starting out. Just last week, Acrisure, a Grand Rapids-based insurance company, announced they’re planning to cut 2250 jobs over the next year due to AI.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s response is severely lacking… or worse, is exacerbating the problem. The people writing federal AI policy right now are the same billionaire tech executives who stand to make the most money from displacing American workers. Under the Trump administration, there’s no one in the room speaking for workers.

Worse yet, across both sides of the aisle, too many legislators or candidates refuse to take on AI and Big Tech for fear that they’ll unleash their millions of dollars in spending against them in their campaigns.

While the industry gets its way, people suffer.

For too long prior to the impact of AI, income inequality has risen as the Middle Class has shrunk. Since 1980, income of the bottom 50% of the population has grown about 20%. Meanwhile, the top 10 percent have enjoyed 145% growth, all the social safety net hasn’t evolved alongside it. Without action now, AI will intensify these economic challenges.

AI will cause a seismic shift across just about every industry.

That shift, however, gives us the opportunity to reshape our economy to finally put people first. But only if we act now.

So today I’m releasing the first part of my plan to put AI on workers’ terms, who are going to bear the brunt of this transition.

1. Establish an AI Workforce Reinvestment Fund

This plan would create a new AI Workforce Reinvestment Fund that would require companies that automate away jobs to contribute pooled resources to fund training and upskilling for American workers struggling to find or keep work because of AI. From young people trying to find their foothold in an industry they care about as entry-level jobs are eliminated, to veteran workers who have devoted years of their lives to jobs that will be automated before they can save up enough for retirement.

2. Create a Federal Apprenticeship Program and Fund Retraining and Upskilling

The AI Workforce Reinvestment Fund will include a first-of-its-kind federal apprenticeship effort – built for the knowledge and office economy, whose jobs are most at risk for AI disruption. Junior workers displaced for entry-level jobs by AI would train for real, senior-level work from day one — for example: shadowing negotiations, working with and managing others, sitting in on client presentations, learning the judgment and strategy AI is bad at and will likely remain bad at for a long time. This will rebuild the career ladder for a generation locked out of entry-level jobs and benefit companies that need to build a pipeline of talent for senior-level jobs (at the companies’ expense).

After all, it’s impossible to get a mid-level management position without first building real-world job experience in more entry-level roles.

The Fund will also include broader retraining across industries of all types through public workforce institutions like the American Job Center network and Michigan Works! As AI tools touch everything from manufacturing, to agriculture, to construction – it’s essential to not just provide a paycheck, but to ensure every worker has access to meaningful work.

3. Strengthen the safety net for the transition.

We can do everything right on apprenticeships and retraining and still have people who fall through the cracks. That’s what a safety net is for, and we need to ensure the net is sufficient for any and all who need it.

My plan would strengthen Unemployment Insurance, TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid for all workers. No American family should lose their healthcare, their food, or their housing because the company they worked for decided a chatbot could do their job.

4. Institute a “Token Tax.”

My plan would adopt a “Token Tax” – a modest fee on commercial AI usage. Tokens are essentially how AI usage is measured (one token is usually about ¾ of a word on the ChatGPT or Claude model you use on your phone). As AI scales to billions of queries (trillions of tokens) a day, this tax becomes a sustainable funding stream for government programs, including the programs above — without raising taxes on a single American worker.

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We’ve weathered major economic disruptions before. Sometimes, policymakers have responded well – the GI Bill, the building of the trades, the expansion of community colleges. Other times, it’s gone poorly – gutting American manufacturing and decimating small towns in Michigan and across the country.

The difference wasn’t whether the technology that led to the disruption was good or bad. It was whether the policymakers showed up for the workers, or whether they handed too much power to the corporations to make the final calls.

This transition is projected to be faster than any economic disruption before. The window to prevent disaster is much smaller. The people building this technology are openly telling us they expect millions of jobs to be eliminated in the next decade.

Now is the time to decide if we’re going to take charge of this transition or let it drown us. Let’s put families and workers first – not billionaires.

— Mallory

Paid for by McMorrow for Michigan