A new bipartisan nonprofit called RAISE US is launching with more than $500 million to help American workers who lose their jobs to artificial intelligence. The group is partnering with states and major employers to build new education and training programs, according to ABC News.
The organization was founded by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, a Republican. Raimondo, who served as the Biden administration's commerce secretary and played a formative role in setting AI policy, will serve as the nonprofit's CEO.
"We're talking about a certain level of unemployment that could destabilize our country and our democracy," Raimondo said. "If you want to lead the world in AI, you have to take action to make sure our democracy doesn't crumble."
Holcomb framed the effort in economic terms. "Good things tend to happen when you convert have-nots into haves," he said.
RAISE US is initially partnering with officials in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland and Utah. Its anchor corporate partners include Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation and Bank of America. Other employers involved include UPS, General Motors, Eli Lilly, Mastercard, chipmaker AMD, Cisco and IBM.
The advisory board includes former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, billionaire investment manager Stephen Schwarzman, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and economists David Autor, Erik Brynjolfsson and Raj Chetty.
The group intends to develop policies that connect schools more closely to employers, so that layoffs can be replaced by pathways to new jobs with higher incomes. They are also exploring changes to corporate taxes and other incentives with the goal of keeping people working.
The scale of the challenge the group is trying to address is significant. An April analysis by the Boston Consulting Group estimated that roughly half of U.S. jobs will be reshaped by AI over the next few years, and that as many as 25 million jobs could be eliminated in the U.S. over the next five years. Goldman Sachs released a separate estimate in March that a quarter of U.S. work hours could be automated by AI.
RAISE US said it is focusing on piloting programs and incentives rather than working through the federal government, a strategy aimed at moving faster than federal policy typically allows. No specific timeline was given for when the first pilot programs would launch.
