Senator Hassan, Colleagues Introduce the Bipartisan AI Workforce PREPARE Act

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan recently helped introduce the bipartisan AI Workforce Projections, Research, and Evaluations to Promote AI Readiness and Employment (PREPARE) Act, which would enhance federal agencies’ ability to assess AI’s impact on the workforce in order to make job training and education programs more effective. The bill would help prepare American workers to succeed in the AI economy.

“American workers cannot be left behind as American corporations continue to push forward with the development and adoption of artificial intelligence,” said Senator Hassan. “This bipartisan legislation helps the federal government better assess the ways in which artificial intelligence is changing our economy and helps ensure that increased automation does not result in fewer jobs for hard-working American families.”

“We have to understand how AI is changing the workforce so we can equip American workers with the skills necessary to stay ahead of China and lead the world,” said Senator Banks.

Key Provisions of the AI Workforce PREPARE Act:

• Create an AI Workforce Research Hub
• Solicit ideas from the public and convene researchers, technical experts, business, and labor to improve data collection on AI and the workforce.
• Enhance the Labor Department’s authorities to hire a core group of AI experts.
• Carry out a pilot project to produce statistics on workers’ job changes as they are affected by AI.
• Increase researchers’ access to the federal government’s workforce data.
• Conduct prize competitions to better understand AI adoption, job impacts, and how AI systems augment or automate tasks in particular occupations.
• Facilitate voluntary public-private partnerships to share anonymized data on how users are adopting AI.
• Improve AI-related questions in federal surveys.
• Update the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice (WARN) Act to provide basic information to employees if AI is a substantial factor in a layoff.
• Improve the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ occupational projections.
• Produce a report on how better AI forecasts can be incorporated into grantmaking decisions.
• Conduct a study on how to design more effective rapid retraining programs to assist workers displaced by AI.
• Use AI-informed projections to update states’ in-demand occupation lists, which are used to allocate training funding.
• Encourage federal agencies, states, local governments, and businesses to collect and report labor market data in more consistent ways.
• Apply existing privacy protections and accessibility requirements to all data collected and exchanged.

Full text of the bill can be found here.

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