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- [00:01]
Kara Swisher
Support for today's show comes from me, Kara Swisher and Johns Hopkins University. Last week, I interviewed Gina Raimondo, 40th Secretary of Commerce and 75th Governor of Rhode island, in the fifth live episode of on with Kara Swisher that I've recorded at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg center in Washington, D.C. in each episode, I've hosted timely discussions on AI policy, copyright and intellectual property, and more as part of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center's Discovery series. Listen to my conversation with Gina Raimondo in this week's episode and stay tuned for more live discussions to come from our partnership with Johns Hopkins University.
- [00:42]
What is the problem on the federal level? Why couldn't the Biden administration get this done? Why couldn't.
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Gina Raimondo
I mean, I'd like calm eye roll
- [00:54]
Kara Swisher
for people listening at home.
- [00:56]
Gina Raimondo
This is a podcast. You can't see my face.
- [00:58]
Kara Swisher
No, you can now. We're not. Podcasts are now.
- [01:01]
Gina Raimondo
Video point. Actually. Yeah, it's on.
- [01:13]
Kara Swisher
Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Gina Raimondo, the US Secretary of Commerce under the Biden administration and former Governor of Rhode Island. During Gina's tenure as secretary, she held a crucial role in the passage of two huge pieces of legislation, the CHIPS act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Now, Gina has been turning her efforts to getting the American workforce ready for AI with a nonpartisan organization she co founded with former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb. It's really important to talk to Gina. She's one of these sort of quiet, competent people that always end up doing a lot of big things in ways that are critically important. I think the CHIPS act and the Infrastructure bill are very important. She's someone who actually appeals to people across party lines, and she makes an effort to do so in an incredibly competent way. What she's talking about is really important. And of course, she may be a presidential candidate, too, so it's important to listen to how she thinks about these things. And of course, AI and jobs is an important issue for the American voters. This episode was recorded live at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg center in Washington, D.C. as part of their Discovery series. Our expert question today comes from Joanna Stern. So stick around.
- [02:49]
I've wanted to get you on forever, as you know. And here we are, finally. I'm very excited. All right, Secretary Gina Raimondo. Gina, thank you for coming on on. And thanks to the Johns Hopkins University, which currently is celebrating its 150th year, if you didn't know, Hopkins is America's first research university. And I'm glad to be back at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg center in Washington, D.C. so let's get started. We have a lot to cover on AI. This is something I know you were one of the first people to talk about this as Commerce Secretary and in other places that I recall hearing about. But I want to give a sense of where we are and what's coming. So on a scale of 1 to 10, how worried are you for the United States about the rapid acceleration of what we're seeing? And call on the stuff you had done as Commerce Secretary and maybe as the governor of Rhode island, which is, I think, the coolest job ever.
- [03:48]
Gina Raimondo
It is the best job. Being the governor is the best job in American politics. I think that's awesome. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm a big fan and it's fun for me to be here. I'd say, you know, nine, pretty high.
- [04:02]
Kara Swisher
Wow.
- [04:02]
Gina Raimondo
Okay, so. And here's why. Okay, you're saying concerns. Yeah, yeah, here's why. Because I don't think the country has the laws, the institutions, the, you know, we're not ready. Commerce Secretary. It's an interesting job. You're half trade minister and half tech minister in the US system. So I was the AI minister.
- [04:26]
Joanna Stern
Right.
- [04:26]
Kara Swisher
You also get the census. Right.
- [04:27]
Gina Raimondo
And census. And fish. And if you want to know anything about red Snapper Catchment, I'm your woman. But if you were to say to me also, hey, Gina, on a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you about its potential? I'd also say a nine. Right. Like, I think it's going to be fantastic to accelerate research, cure diseases, make life easier. I'm really bullish. But what I see now is, and you said it a little bit before, I see the transition to an AI economy as potentially precipitating a period of very high unemployment, particularly among certain kinds of people. White collar workers, White collar workers, women in clerical jobs, entry level workers. And we are just not ready for it. Unemployment Insurance was created 100 years ago. It hasn't changed. We don't have support, infrastructure, incentives for companies to retrain and redeploy, very good retraining initiatives. So I worry about that. And that's what my new initiative is focused on. I'm worried about the national security implications. You know, I mean, we don't have any laws on the books right now or regulations that should worry everyone. We need standards. What is a safe model Then we need to. The government ought to test these models before they're released, and they have to pass these standards. And then if they don't pass, there's going to be consequences. I worry about that. I worry about child safety. I worry so much. I'm a mother to kids. I worry about that. So on the one hand, I'm excited. I don't actually think the technology's the problem.
- [06:16]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [06:17]
Gina Raimondo
I think we have a politics problem, an institutions problem, and we better get our act together fast so we can meet the challenge.
- [06:25]
Kara Swisher
So talk about that politics problem. I mean, what is the problem? Obviously, this is a group of people who figured out that you give money and you get to be the front of the line here. You don't get regulation, whether it's in crypto, whether it's in anything else. So talk a little bit about where we are if that's the case. We need that. How do we get to those kind of policies, especially around the workforce, that are critical?
- [06:50]
Gina Raimondo
Yeah. So, you know, as you might imagine, I have a lot of views on the matter. Money has always been a problem in politics. You know, 50 years ago, people were complaining about money in politics. It is out of control. But it's not just tech, okay? Let's be honest. It is financial services. It's every regulated industry, pharma, financial services. The amount of money that is spent to buy influence is broken. It's a broken system. So you can say this is a problem with these tech billionaires, and I agree. But honestly, we have to fix these systems. We need more transparency. You know, Citizens United was a terrible decision. People often say to me, if you could do one thing to fix American politics, what would it be? I would say this.
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Kara Swisher
Citizens United.
- [07:44]
Gina Raimondo
Yeah, you have to find a way to get money reduced.
- [07:47]
Kara Swisher
Then how then do you get policy around jobs? Because as you said, this job juggernaut is coming. You know, it was really interesting because as I noted before, the tech people said were very doomy, like, oh, yeah, jobs are going to be replaced and suddenly they're changing their tune. Not so. I think they were telling the truth the first time. How do you then get good policy into place? Because everyday Americans are using AI in their daily lives and their jobs. But the anxiety has never been higher among citizens. A survey this summer from Reuters said that half of Americans fear that AI could put them out of the job. I don't know how you feel, because according to Boston Consulting Group, 10 to 15% of jobs could be eliminated by AI as soon as five years from
- [08:27]
Gina Raimondo
now so my focus in my new organization, it's called Raise Us, we're working with and through governors, governors in a bipartisan way. So my new organization is nonprofit, non political, working with governors of both parties. They will take action. They can take action. And we are obsessed with making sure America can lead the global AI competition without leaving workers behind. That's our single mission. And in order to do that, we gotta get innovating. We need new forms of training. But more than training, training isn't gonna get us through this. We need incentives for companies to do the redeployment or disincentives to just hit the easy button with layoffs. We're working with Governor West Moore in Maryland, probably some people here from Maryland to start a year of service. Like one group that I'm really worried about is young people. I have a 22 year old and a 19 year old, you know, they're stressed, what are my jobs going to be? So in Maryland, we're going to fund, and the governor will run in Maryland a year of service for any Marylander young person interested in a job. And we're going to put them in jobs in companies in areas where there's shortage clinical health care work, maybe teaching or teacher's assistance. That's innovative. I hope it works. I hope other states do it and I hope one day Congress gets its act together and puts it in national legislation. I'm very worried about. Like, honestly, middle aged clerical workers, call center workers, customer service workers, salespeople. We cannot just allow AI to rip through this economy. And, and every middle aged woman who has had that same job for 20 years, you say, sorry, you're out of work, you're 55, happens to be my age, you're 55, no more work for you. No. How about wage insurance? How about we let that person get another job? If she gets a job at a lower rate, the government tops up her pay. How about some kind of transition support? How about job sharing? I mean, let's go, let's get creative. Listen, right now, you may know this, you may not. In the United States, if you lose your job, you really get unemployment insurance. That's pretty much all there is. Okay? It's a flawed program in a hundred different ways. If you start a business while you're collecting ui, chances are you get kicked off of UI because you're not really looking for a job. That's kind of dumb. I think, especially if you think, as I do, that AI could unleash a lot of new entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial Everyone knows the majority of jobs created in America's economy is from new small companies. AI potentially could increase that, make it go up. So one idea very quickly that we're going to experiment with is we got to pull all the levers at once to make this work. A governor will say, in our state, if you want to start your own business, you could continue to get unemployment insurance and you can get a new thing called self employment assistance. And then we raise us are going to fund in that state a startup accelerator and help those people to start a business. So is any of this going to work? I'm not sure, but we gotta try it. We gotta stop admiring the problem and get out there and do something.
- [12:05]
Kara Swisher
Why has everyone is sort of saying the doom is coming? It's sort of like the flood is coming. The flood is coming. The flood is, you know, and no one's building an ark anywhere.
- [12:14]
Gina Raimondo
I mean, that's what I'm trying to.
- [12:15]
Kara Swisher
No, I understand that, but what is the problem on the federal level? Why couldn't the Biden administration get this done? Why couldn't.
- [12:27]
Gina Raimondo
I mean, I'd like commerce eye roll
- [12:29]
Kara Swisher
for people listening at home.
- [12:31]
Gina Raimondo
This is a podcast. You can't see my face.
- [12:33]
Kara Swisher
No, you can now. We're not. Podcasts are now.
- [12:36]
Gina Raimondo
Good point, actually.
- [12:36]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, we have changed. We're television.
- [12:43]
Gina Raimondo
Congress doesn't get things done, right? Congress doesn't get shit done. They're not functioning. So in the absence of a functioning bipartisan Congress, I'm taking my message to governors who I think will get some things done. If this plays out in the way that some think and some number of years from now, we start to see pretty high levels of unemployment. My real hope, dream, ambition, whatever is we will raise us between now and then. We'll have some pilots around the country that are working some of these interventions that are allowing people to land jobs, transition from one job to another, not get fired. And that could become the basis for bipartisan federal legislation.
- [13:42]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute. Where the rubber meets the road. A lot of this, and I do. Scott and I talked about this today on pivot. Data centers have become how people are expressing their disgust over AI really. And they're a flashpoint. New York Governor Kathy Hochul hit pause on new data centers in her state until she didn't say none. She said, we're going to figure out how to work this out correctly. We're going to give it a year. Many people now it's up to 50% are approving of this. About 20% aren't. Do you think their approach of moratorium as a policy answer to push back on that. Ordinary citizens in Utah, they're seeing, in Virginia, same thing. But talk about that, because it's become, to me, there's nothing wrong with creating data centers if they're done in cooperation with the community.
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Gina Raimondo
Correct. I agree.
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Kara Swisher
You just said it.
- [14:46]
Gina Raimondo
Do it in co op. Don't go where you're not wanted. Listen, people are anxious for a reason. This is what I believe. Just like everyone here. You get anxious if things are happening to you, making your life worse, making your bills go up and you can't do anything about it. And that's how people feel about data centers. Data centers, like, aren't bad. They will enable innovation. We do want innovation. We do want commerce. However, in Virginia, when there weren't the appropriate safeguards, people's bills, the electricity bills went up. That's not okay. So I think you have to say to these companies, yes, we want your data centers, but do it right.
- [15:31]
Kara Swisher
Right?
- [15:32]
Gina Raimondo
Do it right. Like, you got to bring and figure out your own energy. Electricity bills cannot go up. Same thing with water. You gotta recycle the water. The water bills can't go up. You're not gonna get a tax break to do this. There are ways to do it right. Take care of the workers that you employ, take care of the area. By the way, I don't wanna be an apologist for any tech company, but I think if you said these are the rules, they would probably follow the rules. Cause they need to open these data centers.
- [16:01]
Kara Swisher
So why didn't they in the first place?
- [16:03]
Gina Raimondo
Because they have to be made to.
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Kara Swisher
They have to be made to, right?
- [16:06]
Gina Raimondo
You know, they have to be made to. If I were still the governor, Rhode island doesn't have any open space. But if I were still the governor. But theoretically, if we had space for a data center, I would say, yeah, you can come here under these conditions.
- [16:20]
Kara Swisher
One of the things, when you talk about job loss, you often talk about your father, who lost his job at the Bulova watch factory in the 1980s when the company moved manufacturing to China. With AI adoption, we're walking into, as I said, something faster than anything else that's coming. Talk about that transition. And as you said, what did we get wrong in that transition? And that was happening at a much slower pace than what's happening now.
- [16:44]
Gina Raimondo
So I use that a lot as an analogy to what we're facing now. In that case, every company, every manufacturing company, they put their blinders on, they focused Exclusively on efficiency, enhanced profit from moving labor to China. They did better for a period of time, except it really destroyed the country in many ways, you know, because the quote unquote losers like my dad, they were concentrated. It was non college educated men in a handful of states. And that brought us, I think that sowed the seeds for a lot of this dysfunctional politics and anger and such that we see today. And, and the thing of it is, it didn't have to be that way. We could have had a planned, intentional transition. And that's what I would like to, that's why I'm doing, raise us. I want to play my part in having a planned, intentional transition. By the way, the same was true for the CHIPS act, right? Like those of you who don't know, one of my achievements in the Biden administration, we passed the CHIPS act because all, all manufacturing of leading edge chips left this country and all went to Taiwan, all of it. And we woke up one day and said, my God, national security risk. And we spent hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to fix that by incentivizing Taiwanese and Korean companies to come back. Why didn't we have the foresight to say, hold on a minute, if we allow every stitch of chip manufacturing to go to Taiwan, we're going to wake up one day and be a less safe country. So if you were to say to me, hey Gina, what's the biggest risk of AI? And I know a lot about China and I know a lot about everything I went through. It's this jobs disruption leading to a full on fraying of our democracy and political institutions, which I argue is not in the interest of any tech company. It's not in the interest of any company. I don't know a single company benefited from mass unrest, rioting in the streets, sky high unemployment. So get in the boat. Don't wait for that to happen. Get in the boat today. Have a planned transition. Because the fact of the matter is it's in everyone's interest.
- [19:09]
Kara Swisher
Do you think they're serious about that? Do you see a concern from tech companies that may be causing this damage?
- [19:15]
Gina Raimondo
You know, look, so I'm putting a, I put a big coalition, coalition of companies together, including tech companies. We have a couple dozen, so we'll see. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. You know, we have competitors working together and so we have to try. At the end of the day, you know, this is all gonna take law, regulations and such, but I do think they're worried. Although even a lot of Them who are raising the alarm bell like a warning isn't a solution. You know what I mean?
- [19:47]
Kara Swisher
Right?
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Gina Raimondo
Okay, warning. What are we doing about it? And I will not just put all the blame or responsibility at the foot of AI companies. It's every American company implementing AI. I refuse to believe there's not a way to use AI. Invent AI, lead the world in AI and implement it in a way so that we have a smooth transition without sky high unemployment. Like there is a way. So let's figure it out.
- [20:22]
Kara Swisher
So each episode on the podcast we get an expert question. Here's yours from Joanna Stern.
- [20:28]
Joanna Stern
Hi, I'm Joanna Stern, a tech journalist and the author of I Am Not a My Year Using AI to Do Almost Everything. My question for Gina Raimondo is this. I am currently reporting on a company that pays low wage workers to wear head mounted cameras and they're wearing these while doing their job, including house cleaning, so that the data can be used to train robots. In the short term, those workers earn money. In the long term, they may be helping train the very robots that could replace them. And we've seen this already in customer service. What do you say to someone who's literally training the AI that is going to create their replacement? Is retraining enough or do we need new economic models that let workers share in the value that they're helping create?
- [21:12]
Gina Raimondo
No, retraining is not enough. It's not enough. It's a piece of the puzzle. But you know, I've already said we need new forms of transition support, incentives for companies, disincentives for mass layoffs. It is possible. Listen, it's a very dynamic economy. Our economy is amazing. As much as we complain about it, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world. Most of the jobs in American economy today didn't exist 50, 60 years ago. And I really am still bullish that in some number of years AI is going to create new jobs, new businesses that we can't now predict. But you cannot pull the rug out from under tens of millions of Americans quickly. You just can't. And think that we're still going to have an America that we want to live in.
- [22:07]
Kara Swisher
When you look at that picture, that is what's happening. They're training. And I recall when I went down, when they were going to, they were going to remember it was going to be Silicon Holler. They were going to train former coal workers to be software workers, which thank goodness they didn't because they would have been replaced by AI very quickly. But I Got up and said, actually none of you are going to be doing this. You didn't get the proper education. And besides, AI is going to replace you. And FYI, as soon as the guy sitting next to me, who was the coal mine owner, can use robots to replace you, he's going to do it in five seconds. And he was like, no, I'm not. I'm like, oh, you will. I know you will. I'm absolutely certain. No question. In fact, you probably already bought one. And the workers, I thought I would sort of get the workers mad at me. They were appreciative because I was like, you're not. They're going to replace you. So how do you, if you think of where jobs are going, what is the role of the human being? And the only saving grace is right now tokens are more expensive than people. These are the tokens you use AI for, Right. So what kind of jobs exist? Because this raise AI you're doing with Eric Holcomb, who is the former governor of Indiana, Republican. And you're working with Maryland, Arkansas, Utah and Connecticut. Very nice. Two two, two two and two two blue. Two red. Right. What jobs do you imagine happening there?
- [23:22]
Gina Raimondo
So I would say it's hard to know right now. I do think that, like I said, I think there'll be a lot more startups and you're already starting to see that. Let me say it's very early days, very early days. I think it's a little early to tell who's losing the job, who's gaining the job. You started to see the freak out with no one could get a job in software engineering. But now software engineering job openings are up again. My general view is this. Right now people say, oh, It's a strong economy, 4ish percent unemployment. You're going to get under the hood of that number. If you're working part time in America, you're counted as employed, even if you have a crappy 20 hour a week job. We have a lot of people who are economically insecure, et cetera. So I think the way I think about it is we have to focus on entry level workers and help them get jobs. We got to put pressure on companies. I want to get the first company to say, we are not cutting our analyst program, right? So we got to focus on that. We have to focus on these call center workers. They have skills. You cannot just fire them all. You got to figure out what they're good at and help them get another job. There's an economic theory which I think is probably True. When you make stuff cheaper, people want more of it. So if because of AI, things are more productive, it's cheaper to make software, there may be more of it. All of which is to say, I don't think anyone knows where the new jobs are coming from. The companies need to know that, and I think we have to hold them to account.
- [25:03]
Kara Swisher
What jobs are you most worried about? You mentioned a few that you're worried about. Which ones do you feel are safe in the economy in that regard?
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Gina Raimondo
Well, I definitely think it's a timeline, you know, like, safe. 50 years from now, who knows what the world's gonna look like?
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Kara Swisher
Well, we'll be down. What do we care?
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Gina Raimondo
Yes, exactly. That's how I look at it. But any kind of trade is in hot demand right now. Technicians are in demand. Fibers, technicians are in demand.
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Kara Swisher
Help by AI because they have more.
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Gina Raimondo
Exactly. Clinical jobs. Like, there's a. There's another thing. America's workforce system is pretty terrible, right? We just route everybody to college and hope it works out. And it mostly doesn't. It's true. 40% of people who.
- [25:52]
Kara Swisher
Ladies and gentlemen, she's running for president. Doesn't work out.
- [25:58]
Gina Raimondo
Like, you know, you, like, go to college. In any event. Like, we have shortages right now of physical therapists, all respiratory therapists, all kinds of clinical workers, aides. But yet you go try to become a physical therapist. It's really hard. It's expensive. There aren't enough spots in schools. It takes forever. So let's use the occasion of AI, which could be a crisis, and start fixing these institutions, get people where the jobs are. There are some. And let's get going.
- [26:36]
Kara Swisher
So presumably, like a lot of technologies, they do cut jobs and then they create them. That tends to be the historical. Many tech people will tell you that's not gonna be the case this time. They do say that. Now they don't because they're PR people. I don't either. But I do think that at some point, you wouldn't have anticipated Uber at the beginning of the Internet age or Airbnb or any. Like, you might have, but you wouldn't have necessarily. And. And what's interesting is some of your funders of this raise us are tech companies, because they're obviously concerned. Why would you take their money? I guess. I mean, I would take their money if it was to screw with them. I'm good with that. But you want to guard against reputation insurance with these companies, presumably for them, not you.
- [27:26]
Gina Raimondo
Oh, for them, yeah. Look, you're going to have to ask Them why they gave the money. I, I'm trying to solve a problem. I'm trying to come up with ways to get America through this transition, be creative, innovate new things. And they're funding the effort. So I'm going to take them at their word and we're going to see what works. But they're not running the company. I am. It's a nonprofit, not a company. So I just feel that it's time for action. It's time for, like I've said, let's try some new things.
- [28:03]
Kara Swisher
So say you were the head of the President of the United States, for example.
- [28:08]
Gina Raimondo
Yes, yes. That'd be a refreshing change if that were.
- [28:10]
Kara Swisher
Yes, I know, I know.
- [28:11]
Gina Raimondo
Relative to what we have, what would
- [28:13]
Kara Swisher
be the important, what would be the first thing you would do here then in this, you know, you helped, you were very critical to this. The chips act. What kind of scale if the first thing you would do as a president in this area?
- [28:28]
Gina Raimondo
Very first thing I would do besides
- [28:30]
Kara Swisher
taking the gold down. Go ahead, move along.
- [28:32]
Gina Raimondo
Yeah, the gold, I have a funny story about that.
- [28:36]
Kara Swisher
No, go ahead.
- [28:37]
Gina Raimondo
Sorry. When I became governor, you get something called the gorget. Does anyone know what a gorget is? Anyway, it's like a giant piece of metal. It's a metal shield from the days when the governor commanded the militia in the colonies in Rhode Island. And so I put my head down and they put this gigantic 10 pound shield around me. And when my mom, who's hilarious and dry witted, came up to the stage to congratulate me, she said, nice bling, G. So when I think of gold, I think of the bling. Anyway. Okay.
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Kara Swisher
Like first, first you should go give it to Trump and get something from him.
- [29:19]
Gina Raimondo
Yeah, yeah. It's not gold. He wouldn't like it.
- [29:24]
Kara Swisher
First thing is, neither is what's in the White House. But go ahead.
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Gina Raimondo
Safety, safety, safety, safety, safety. You know, this stuff is pretty scary. You just did a program on Nicole Perl Cyber.
- [29:37]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
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Gina Raimondo
I don't want to freak anyone out, but these models get pretty scary pretty fast.
- [29:43]
Kara Swisher
Yes, they do.
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Gina Raimondo
With respect to cybersecurity, you know, in the hands of bad actors who want to take down our hospital system, want to take down our military, want to take down our infrastructure. It's pretty scary pretty fast.
- [29:56]
Kara Swisher
It is. Creating average people can do it. Everyone's like, the Chinese. I'm like, the Chinese has no interest in our country collapsing. Correct. Some crazy person with a nuclear weapon does.
- [30:07]
Gina Raimondo
Totally, completely. Bioterrorism, same thing. It's not that Hard for average people to create new pathogens. So I would be all over that. Like Erdi said, standards, pre deployment testing, regulations with penalties. You gotta get on that pronto. And then I'd get with our allies, maybe even China. China has no interest in this stuff getting into the hands of terrorists or non state actors. So I would be all over that right away. And then I would get very aggressive around the economics. You know, it's hard for me to sit here today, know exactly what I would do, but by the time I'm in that position, raise us. We'll have some great pilots and we can like scale the good ones. No, seriously, I don't know. You need major overhaul of unemployment insurance. We need much more creative thinking about mid career transition support and training. Companies need incentives. I mean, look, you might like CEOs, you might not. You might like companies, you might not. Doesn't matter. We all respond to incentives. You're a CEO, you fire people today, your stock price goes up tomorrow, it's an incentive. You hire a human being, you pay for that human being. Payroll taxes, health care benefits, et cetera. You use an agent free. That is not the right set of incentives. At some point, maybe we have to tax AI usage by companies. We need a different set of incentives.
- [31:41]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, I like that idea.
- [31:42]
Gina Raimondo
When I was governor in Rhode Island, I put in a new tax on software as a service. Now there's a lot of reasons you might not like that. However, it raised money and we may have to get to that place, right? Like if we find companies buying lots of tokens and firing lots of people
- [32:08]
Kara Swisher
and dumping them on the government to deal with.
- [32:10]
Gina Raimondo
Dumping them on the government to deal with. Medicaid, food stamps, whatever. That's a free lunch that they shouldn't have. So we gotta figure out our way through it.
- [32:23]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute. When you think about higher education, and I see now your presidential run will be about college. What's it for? Here at Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg center in Washington D.C. but how does higher education.
- [32:50]
Gina Raimondo
I'm paying a lot of bills for two kids.
- [32:52]
Kara Swisher
I know, I feel your pain. I feel your pain on that. My son's at Michigan.
- [32:56]
Gina Raimondo
Oh, go blue.
- [32:57]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, go blue. Oh, God, those people never stop. I know that, I get it, but calm down.
- [33:04]
Gina Raimondo
I know, I know.
- [33:06]
Kara Swisher
You are the best.
- [33:07]
Gina Raimondo
It's a disease.
- [33:08]
Kara Swisher
It is.
- [33:09]
Gina Raimondo
It is a disease. I'm married to a wolverine.
- [33:11]
Kara Swisher
Are you? I ran into a guy who was about 100 years old and I was wearing a Michigan dad hat. My son Got me and it's perfect. And this guy, literally, he was 100 years old, he's like, that was the best time of my life. And I'm like. And he goes, goat blue is the best time of my life. I was like, you literally had the worst life ever then.
- [33:31]
Gina Raimondo
Yes, exactly.
- [33:34]
Kara Swisher
That was the best time.
- [33:35]
Gina Raimondo
All downhill 21. That's a little sad.
- [33:38]
Kara Swisher
Anyway, sorry, let's trash other universities while we're here at Johns Hopkins. But how does higher education fit into this university's incorporating AI into the curriculum, preparing students for jobs beyond creative cheating. What is important about that?
- [33:58]
Gina Raimondo
It's rampant.
- [33:59]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, it is.
- [33:59]
Gina Raimondo
But again, so I have a lot of views on this that might not surprise you. Look, I think we need many fewer colleges. There's about 4,000 in this country. Not you guys, you're awesome. But just like, listen, there's about 4,000 universities, colleges in this country, many, many, many don't have great outcomes. It is expensive. 30 plus percent of kids who start college don't finish. That means they have a lot of debt, no degree and maybe not a great job. And if you're a high school student, when you graduate in this country, there's precious few other options. You go into the military, awesome. You can go into a labor union, do a trades job, awesome. Otherwise, what do you do? You get routed to college or you get some low wage service job, that's not okay. You know why? And that's one of the things that raise us. I want to build. Why does Germany and the UK and everything, why can you get an apprenticeship program? Like why don't we have apprenticeships in this country? Why don't we have training options that are shorter than a four year college and set you up for a job where they're connected to a job. So I'm hopeful that with AI we get to the business of doing big things. You know, if you get lucky enough to go to Johns Hopkins, lucky enough to go to Notre Dame, Michigan, great. You're gonna. It's great. But not everyone can do that. I'm not an educator. I'm not going to pretend I am one. So you have to ask educators how to educate in the age of AI. I would simply say this. Every employer I talk to, and I talk to a lot, all the time, they want people who show up on day one who know how to use AI to do the job, not AI to cheat, not AI to do a simple query.
- [36:09]
Kara Swisher
So where do you get the ROI from it, Right?
- [36:13]
Gina Raimondo
Yeah, exactly. You have to show up on the job Knowing how to use AI for that job. So you guys in higher ed, you have to, I don't know how you do it. You got to figure out how to teach people still critical thinking and how to write. But you can't ignore AI. You have to teach them those actual skills, otherwise they will never get that job.
- [36:33]
Kara Swisher
I'm sure we have some Johns Hopkins students in the audience. What would you say to them and what to expect and how to prepare for their futures? Because they're really on the pointy end of all these changes, especially some of them. I mean, I also have older kids. My son is a cook. So robots aren't really good. He's great. I know he's doing great. I just had a delicious meal in San Francisco where he's at. And I know my other son thinks about it a lot because that's why he went into mechanical engineering, because he knows energy. He did not go into software engineering on purpose because he saw AI coming. What would you say to a college student right now of how to prepare themselves for people in the audience that are students?
- [37:08]
Gina Raimondo
So first of all, I'll tell you, I have a 22 year old kid who was asking me about this yesterday. And I'll tell you what I said to her, which is face the future with courage. Right? Don't be afraid. It's gonna be ups and downs. Face the future with courage. There are going to be jobs. Okay, I really do not buy into the. There's gonna be nothing for humans to do because the agents will do everything. There's a hundred reasons why that isn't true. And remember, just because a model can do something in your lab in Silicon Valley doesn't mean that it will and immediately displace everyone. I mean, in 2006, Elon was saying we'll have no truck drivers by I think, I don't know, 2015 or something. He said a lot of things, that's my point. But these guys.
- [37:53]
Kara Swisher
Do you know we have 50,000 Optimus prime robots in our homes right now?
- [38:00]
Gina Raimondo
I did not know that.
- [38:01]
Kara Swisher
He said that many years ago.
- [38:02]
Gina Raimondo
Yeah, we don't have any. Yeah, no, exactly.
- [38:05]
Kara Swisher
Do you know there'd be thousands of his self driving taxis across the world? There are, but they're not his perfect example.
- [38:15]
Gina Raimondo
Perfect example.
- [38:16]
Kara Swisher
Did you know we were going to be on Mars last year?
- [38:19]
Gina Raimondo
We're behind, you're behind, we're behind.
- [38:21]
Kara Swisher
But he is more than welcome to go to Mars.
- [38:25]
Gina Raimondo
I tell this to my own kids. Look at where the jobs are open in the economy. Maybe you have your heart set on being something. Maybe you can do that at another point. If there's no jobs right now, there are open jobs now. Learn how to use the technology. Learn how to be an entrepreneur. Consider starting a business. And most of all, learn how to make good decisions. Judgment, like staying calm under pressure. The only thing that's certain right now is we're in for a wild ride. So developing the skills of the resilience to get you through the wild ride and being scrappy and resourceful and self starter, it's important to learn those skills because any individual job you plan for is going to change. And so you just got to get ready for that. And not everyone can deal with change.
- [39:21]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [39:22]
Gina Raimondo
Change is scary.
- [39:23]
Kara Swisher
If you were 21 year old, you're a 21 year old, Gina.
- [39:26]
Gina Raimondo
I wish.
- [39:27]
Kara Swisher
Me too. You will soon do that through technology. What job would you be doing right now? You're leaving college. What would you do?
- [39:38]
Gina Raimondo
I'd try to start my own business. I would. I think it's pretty cool that with AI you can use AI to start a business on the cheap with not that many. There's so many problems to solve in the world. That's the other thing. Face the future with courage. Pick a problem and try to solve it. Like that's what I would do.
- [39:56]
Kara Swisher
What would be the problem?
- [39:57]
Gina Raimondo
Oh, gosh, not enough cheesecakes.
- [40:01]
Kara Swisher
What? I don't know.
- [40:03]
Gina Raimondo
You can make a better cheesecake. I don't have those skills. Something in health care, it's like there's too many people who, like, get health care in this country. Like, man, bring down the cost, you know, bring down the cost of delivering health care so everybody can get some.
- [40:19]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. All right. Anyway, thank you so much, secretary. Do I call you secretary or governor? Which one are you supposed to keep? I was just with Quentin and I didn't know which one to call her.
- [40:31]
Gina Raimondo
She's just calling me Gina.
- [40:32]
Kara Swisher
Gina. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Gina. And thank you. Maybe Ms. President someday. And thank you again to the Johns Hopkins for hosting us here tonight at the Bloomberg Center. We'll be back later this year for more conversations about the intersection of AI innovation and public policy. And you can sign up at WashingtonDC JHU EDU to find out how to join us. I'll be back with a really interesting speaker, the next one. And I'm so glad you're here and I'm so glad you come out. It's really wonderful. IRL is back. I'm sorry to tell you, but that's. And I'M so glad. Thank you so much. Today's show was produced by Tracy Hunt, Madeleine laplante Duvey and Kaitlin Lynch. Special thanks to Dave Shaw, Steve Bone and Julia Sharpe Levine. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, your career is AI proof. If not, then get to retraining. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.