The Word from Inside the House
Last week a $500 million non-profit funded by Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon and many others was announced. It’s called RAISE US and works primarily with state governments to help workers transition to different jobs in the AI age.
I’m glad people are starting to act. But I will say that this kind of effort is an enormous acknowledgment that tons of workers are going to lose their jobs to AI.
Among those already affected by the arrival are those in Silicon Valley. Amidst significant layoffs, folks are witnessing the impact of AI firsthand.
“I was working seven days a week on AI until recently,” recalls Clara Shih, the founder of the New Work Foundation. “I was running the deployment of AI within Meta to businesses that were using our platform. We rolled out AI agents to serve the needs of over a million businesses, which I was very proud of. The agents managed ad spend, customer service and other functions. But I started to notice something. The businesses told me that the agents worked so well that they didn’t need the staffer who had been doing that sort of work.”
That hit Clara hard. “I realized that, if we were replacing workers at hundreds of thousands of businesses, AI was going to do the same throughout the economy. When I first heard you talk years ago, Andrew, about the eventual impact of AI on jobs, I thought you were crazy. Now I feel like you were right.”
Clara has done just about everything in tech, including starting a successful company after graduating from Stanford with two degrees in Computer Science and stints at Google and Salesforce. Today, she points out data showing AI’s negative effect on two popular categories of work for recent college graduates: software development and customer service. “Young people are already seeing fewer opportunities in both of those fields because new tools can do that work more efficiently. And this is going to speed up as AI gets deployed to more functions and companies.”
In Silicon Valley, “There’s a feeling that the gates are closing and that you have to do all you can to get through them right now,” Clara relates. But Clara is doing more than just talking about it. She left Meta a few months ago to start the New Work Foundation, which launched in April.
“I started hearing from young people who were sending hundreds of resumes out and not getting hired; it started to wear on their confidence and self-esteem. I co-founded the New Work Foundation to help young workers. They pick a field like Marketing, Accounting or Software Engineering at dearcc.org. We put them in pods with others who are similar in background so they have a peer group. We then provide them both human and AI mentoring and equip them with AI tools that would make them valuable to employers.”
Clara is new to this but not new to scaling products. “I’m treating this like it’s a startup with a purpose of helping people and workers. Everyone’s volunteering. One of my co-founders is 25 years old, which is helpful in communicating to young people where they are.” Clara is volunteering and the Foundation is a non-profit. I am a big admirer of her spirit; Clara is a rare leader who stepped away from the commercial rewards of AI to address human needs. I have the feeling more and more folks are going to need her help in the days ahead.
For my interview of Clara on the New Work Foundation, click here. For resources for young people looking for a job, click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk in LA on July 22nd. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore.