President Donald Trump is reportedly considering a government review of artificial intelligence models before they are released, reversing his administration’s hands-off approach. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, from a famously laissez-faire state, has announced his support for legislation moving through Florida’s legislature to protect consumers from rising electricity prices resulting from new data centers. They are responding to increasing concerns about both AI safety and data centers. Yet a new Milken Institute-Harris Poll finds Americans feel left behind on the issue that matters most: jobs. A whopping 80% say they want the government to start preparing workforce transition programs now. Sixty-eight% feel they are navigating the AI transition entirely alone.
Remarkably, business agrees. Eighty-eight percent of business leaders say individual companies cannot solve for AI workforce readiness alone and that a coordinated national response is required. The people deploying the technology and the people living with it have reached the same conclusion. Washington has not caught up.
Those concerns are grounded in data. AI disruption may move faster than anything we have seen before. Researchers have calculated that the speed of adoption of general-purpose technologies has increased with each successive wave — and AI’s low deployment barriers, spreading through software rather than factories, make it faster still. The IMF estimates that over 60% of jobs in advanced economies are already exposed to AI — and unlike prior waves of automation that hit factories and routine tasks, this one lands hardest on cognitive, white-collar work: legal analysis, financial services, software development, administrative functions. A Stanford study found that workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations have already seen a 16% drop in employment.
