Policy Watch

Displacement of people by AI is the top concern on the minds of Congress and state legislatures. Politicians rise and fall on jobs numbers; there’s a reason the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures are so tightly scrutinized. While early legislative focus was on the use of AI in hiring and recruitment, there’s been a shift of late to more concerns about actual displacement.

New York amended its WARN Act(opens in new tab) to require some AI jobs displacement reporting, and a recent AI blueprint from the White House devoted much of its text to the preservation of labor in the face of AI.

And perhaps most tangible, the recent bills in New York and California around disclosing AI in advertising were both pushed by SAG-AFTRA. SAG-AFTRA’s concerns in being displaced by AI are obvious, and they’ve started campaigning aggressively at the state level on these issues.