Governor’s new Executive Order addresses AI in the workplace

Dire predictions are everywhere regarding the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on all segments of American society. Among them, there’s great concern over AI’s impact on the realities of employment. Both to address that concern and to burnish his credentials as the undeclared front runner for Democratic Party Nominee for President of the United States, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed what he describes as the “first-of-its-kind executive order [EO N-6-26] to prepare workers and businesses for potential AI disruption.” 

Retain, retrain, or repay 

The order’s stated purpose is to confront the economic impacts of AI on workers and small businesses. The policies the order explores include severance standards, employment insurance and transition support for displaced workers, worker ownership models, expanded workforce training, and stronger tracking of hiring and payroll trends. 

Predictably, the order focuses most heavily on retraining an incumbent workforce for retention and creating new wage continuation mechanisms for displaced workers. It seeks to ride a fence between worker protection and the need of small businesses to use AI to survive. 

Most radically, the order seeks exploration into “severance and other forms of compensation such as stock or other forms of equity” for displaced workers. Agencies and the private sector are to “evaluate and support opportunities to expand and enhance worker ownership models to support broad-based capital growth and build wealth from productivity gains among workers, including employee-owned company structures.”