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The AI Policy Podcast
Bridging the Public-Private Tech Talent Divide with Arun Gupta
00:40:06
Arun Gupta, CEO of NobleReach Foundation and experienced venture capitalist, joins for a discussion on bridging the technology talent gap between the private and public sectors.
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- [00:00]
A
The US Government has a significant shortage of expertise in tech and artificial intelligence. Today, we're going to talk about how to attract more skilled talent to public service. Welcome back to the AI Policy Podcast. In this episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by a special guest, Arun Gupta. Arun is CEO of noblereach, a nonprofit that seeks to empower young technologists to flow between the private and public sectors. He has a background in venture capital and has co authored two books, Venture Meets Aligning People, Purpose and Profit to Innovate and Transform Society, and most recently, the Mission Generation, Reclaim youm Purpose, Rewrite Success, Rebuild Our Future. Arun is also a lecturer at Stanford University for Valley Meets Mission and and an adjunct entrepreneurship professor and senior advisor to the Provost at Georgetown University. Arun, thanks for joining me today to talk about Noble Reach, the tech talent gap in government and mission aligned careers.
- [01:09]
B
Thank you for having me. It's great to be with csis.
- [01:12]
A
Yeah. So let's get started. I wanted to start with Noble Reach, which is the foundation that you lead. So I'm really interested in what drew you to Noble Reach, what you're hoping to achieve at the organization, and how you made the transition from your career in venture capital to working in the nonprofit space.
- [01:33]
B
Well, thank you for having me. Well, look, you know, a lot of times what I say is that my career makes sense looking backwards. It doesn't really make sense looking forward. And so, you know, the arc of the story might be helpful as far as the lens we bring to the table. So my, my father grew up in public service. So, you know, he was in the Navy for 40 plus years. So public service has been in our family. My career was in Carlisle and then Columbia Capital and venture capital. So I saw the power of entrepreneurship and in the latter half of my time there was really investing at the intersection of mission, tech and entrepreneurship. So cybersecurity and companies that really were helping our national security infrastructure. You saw the magic when you made that work. But I also saw the challenges in that process when I moved to the next chapter of thinking about what I wanted to do. We were focused on philanthropic activity in our family, but also was teaching at Georgetown at Stanford. And I created a class at Stanford called Valley Meets Mission at Stanford in Washington, which is really around like how do we get Stanford students to not think about using the entrepreneurial spirit on Katy Cross 3.0, but how do we go have them point that at solving mission driven problems, but in a for profit way and where government can be a partner in that process? And it really Highlighted for me how these students really were getting siloed into thinking that either you do something meaningful, but you can't make money doing it, or you go make money and it can't do something meaningful. And was trying to highlight that there's a place in between where you can do both. That led to writing the first book, Venture Meets Mission, which is what led to us being able to then raise the foundation called Noble Reach, where we have a half a billion dollar endowment today. The tenants that we had written about is that the superpowers of our country is that we create talent better than anywhere else in the world and we innovate better than anywhere else in the world. The evidence is everyone from around the world comes here to do both. But what we haven't done over decades is really invest in the infrastructure to connect those two ecosystems to government. So we weren't seeing our top talent going into government and our top innovators collaborating with government. And so can we create an institution and not for profit that can help catalyze that intersection? And that's really what we set out to do with Noble Reach, specifically focused around tech talent, as you, as you highlighted, primarily because, you know, one of the stats that we came across is that less than 7% of tech workers in government are under the age of 30. We have four times over the age of 60. And so, you know, no private company would probably operate that way. And so really came down to how do we get young folks inspired to come in? Again, our theory of the case. There's two conclusions you can reach when you see that data. One is that this generation doesn't care. Our theory of the case was actually the opposite, that this generation cares more than previous generations to want to serve and give back. It's just that the pathways have not been modernized to meet them to where they are. And if we could create a program and pathways to enable that, that we could really start to create some real systemic change. So that's what we're doing at noblereach. Think Teach for America appointed in public service. How do we get our top young folks, AI, cyber bio kids, thinking of starting their career in public service with the idea that they also view it as a career enhancer? We celebrate them if they stay in public service. We celebrate them if they leave and go to the private sector. And we hope that they'll be ambassadors to back to public service.
- [05:06]
A
Yeah, that's really interesting. I think one thing I'd be really keen to know is that you mentioned that the foundation has a really significant endowment. What is your hope or what is your plan for scaling up or scaling up your programs? Or how are you thinking about what the foundation might be doing in the future? Leveraging that pretty significant endowment.
- [05:31]
B
Two things, you know, the two things that we're looking at, you know, much of the focus right now is on the talent side. So. And we think about creating talent pathways across all career stages. But our focus initially has been early career is really scale that at a meaningful level. So our first Cohort, we had 250 applicants for 20 spots. Our second cohort we had about 1300 for 30 spots. And what we were showing is that the bottleneck really wasn't the demand of students wanting to apply. The bottleneck was actually getting the placements inside of government. And so. But we needed to earn that credibility, and our students are a big part of that. And as we have now, we're expanding that across a couple of dimensions. One, our first cohort was only federal. The second cohort was across 10 states as well. And now in this next cohort, we'll be doing federal, state, local, and also exploring, looking at working with a prominent NGO to do something internationally as well. So, you know, the idea for us is how do we scale this to get a real kind of almost a movement going where people really think about wanting to start their career this way? A big part of that is getting a coalition of private sector partners that, you know, lend their credibility to say, this is the kind of program that, that we think is important. This is the kind of program that if people came through it, we would want to hire folks from it. And even if it's a kind of program that even if we had two year associates, we would want them to go to it. And so we've been establishing those relationships with your normal recruiters on campus. But the seminal, I think scaling Opportunity has been our collaboration with techforce at the federal level, where they're now stating to try to get a thousand people in to government that are tech talent. We're the sole programmatic partner to help them with that and are helping them scale. So, you know, the overarching vision is like, we'd love to be seeing thousands, you know, each year kind of cycling through the program, because I think that changes the narrative and the social narrative on college campuses. And we want to shift it from, like, why would you do that? To wow, you got selected to do that, right? So we talk internally about, like, how do we shift why? To wow, right, and create that buzz. And we've done this before as a country. Right. We've did it, you know, we've had Peace Corps, we've had AmeriCorps. We've never appointed it ironically at public service. And so, you know, that's the opportunity that we see.
- [08:10]
A
Yeah. So since you mentioned it, I wanted to talk about TechForce. So TechForce is a relatively new creation. It was just announced in December of last year. So it's a program that, that opm, the Office of Personal Personnel Management, has launched and they are really focused on, well, they call the program a new cross government program to recruit top technologists to modernize the federal government. And Noble Reach is a founding partner in that initiative. And I'd love to know sort of how Noble Reach got involved in that and sort of what your specific role and your specific hopes are in, in relation to that program.
- [08:50]
B
Yeah, so, you know, the way we, we got involved was, you know, we had started the program in 24, so we were already in motion and you know, when there was the change of the administration, so we were working with the previous administration and as this administration came in and Scott came in at opm, we had gotten connected and shared what we were doing. And the outcome that we were trying to strive for was very aligned with what Scott was looking for, which is like, how do we get our top young folks inspired about wanting to go into public service and make it easy for them to do so? And how do we have government compete with your top private sector firms, but in a different way, not based on just salary, but based on purpose and mission to have kids want to come in and start. And we believe that that was possible in seeing what we were doing and given that we were already kind of learning, had a couple years of learning underneath us, it became a very natural partnership to share. Here's what we've learned, here's where easy ways to bring people in, here's how we place them, here's what we've learned around how to pick the right candidates, the right agencies. And so a lot of it think of it, is nothing more than us being kind of open, sourcing our program and sharing those learnings with them in that capacity. In addition to that, as we continue to scale, we have folks that are coming through our Noble Roots Scholars program that could go through techforce as well. And we're helping kind of coalesce this coalition of both academia, industry, et cetera, around the program in a meaningful way.
- [10:41]
A
Yeah, so one of the, I think one of the differences, at least that I read between the programs you run directly at Noble Reach. And sort of how techforce works is that you're working a lot with young people who want to work with government. But there's a difference between working with government and working in government. And I was curious how you see those differences and sort of are there different kinds of skills that you're looking for when you're embedded inside government, working at an agency versus say working at a company that's trying to develop products that support a national security function.
- [11:22]
B
So if you look at the missions for the folks going in as Tech Force or Noble Roots are very similar actually because they're always working for government. So our cohort, for the most part, we're placing them inside of the agencies. They're employees, full time employees of the agencies. They're not overreach. So it's very similar to the way they would be going in as Tech Force. I mean, they're also going in with the same interim hiring authorities that agencies have. And so all of that's very similar. You know, what we started initially was much more targeting university graduates. And one of the things with techforce which I think is great actually because it helps scale the opportunity set, is to look at this from a skill based hiring perspective. So it just doesn't need to only be universities as well. So if you think about bringing in top cyber talent, if you can take the right technical tests, pass them and bring them in, then that's great. And so I think that's, you know, that's an expansion of how we're thinking about this, really at volume. But otherwise I think, you know, as far as what we look for in folks going in, it's a desire to go work in government, but not necessarily having a career in government. And that's an important distinction. You know, when we talk about joining the program, we're not saying we're not trying to be a pipeline to public service. We're trying to build a community of what we call dual citizens, public private sector citizens, people that understand the language of both sectors, the culture of both sectors, and ultimately have networks in both sectors. And in that if you have that stack in two places, you ultimately are also able to rebuild trust. And that becomes the most precious currency that you have. And so I think that's what we're really trying to. Because I think we are in a trust deficit right now. And part of the reason we assert is that we've gone through decades where we've sent folks into their siloed sector. You go to private sector, you go to government. You go to academia and you go to the not for profit world and everyone just stays there. And we don't have enough folks that are kind of fluent across these sectors and the problems we have today across these sectors. Right. So these, these problems that we have, whether it be national security, health care, climate, etc. Don't reside in a sector, they're across it. So it requires people that have fluency across these sectors so that we can get the best out of each vote.
- [14:04]
A
So another question I had is techforce is not the only program the government has to bring in tech talent into government. So there are other programs like, like PIFFs, the Presidential Innovation Fellows that focus more on mid career technologists and bring them in for tours of duty that really focus on leveraging their expertise to solve specific types of problems that the government is facing. I'm curious about your thesis about focusing on early career technologists. So what is the reasoning behind focusing on that and how do you see the impact of being different than, than these other programs that focus more on experienced talent or mid career talent coming into government?
- [14:51]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. So look, I think there's a few things that are different. One is scale. None of the other programs have scale. They're the same number of people. The size of the problem we have, like bringing 50 people in is great, but it's a drop in the bucket. The problem's growing exponentially and we're just kind of running programs, we're not solving problems in that context. It's one thing if that was scaling and we were now bringing in a thousand people that are mid career, but we're not. And so, and that's hard to do if you're honest about it. So where is it easier to kind of bring in and start to change that narrative? I think it's the early career side in bringing young folks in early for a few reasons. One, I think their ability in today's day and age with AI and tech, and we have stories now to show this to land and have impact on institutions. It no longer takes three to four years just to come up to speed with like how do I understand federal jargon before I can be effective. These kids can now hit the ground running in a way. And we've got one that just got a medal yesterday at the Navy that's now the lead frontier model engineer for the CTO of the Navy. He's been there 18 months. And what you find is that AI is creating a through line right now where there's no such thing as mid career experts in AI, they're all the early career folks. And so if you're going to try to really inject the skill sets you need, you need to look early career. I think on the people side, I think what's incredibly important is also getting young folks rekindled around the notion of service. Again, honestly, I think getting them close to problems early. Wendy Kopp and I have talked about this and she writes about this. Getting young folks close to problems that they care about and building careers that they care about around those problems is shaped when you bring them in earlier versus later in their careers. And there's a force multiplier effect. And so I think that's the dual sided piece that we're trying to map. There's such a huge need for tech talent in government. We keep going after mid career folks which are hard to poach, hard to get. And then in a world of AI may not even exist yet. There's all these young folks that can have real impact. And you know, I was on a panel with Justin Finelli and you know, the question got asked like, well, how are these young folks able to really make impact if they're only there for a couple of years? And he goes, well, what's changed is that the projects we have are no longer only two to five year projects. I have two month projects, so we're sprinting. And so the people I'm bringing in right now can have massive impact in a very short period of time. I think that's a transition that we're seeing and why we decided to go after the early career side of it also because again, like you said, programs had existed already on the mid career side. So to me this is always about an and function. I'm always curious when folks say like, oh, that program actually exists already. And I'm like, well, I'm not actually looking at is the program exists. I'm asking, does the problem still exist? And from what I can tell, when less than 7% of tech workers are under the age of 30, there's a problem. Now we can say like, all right, we've got a program that's putting 30 people in every year. That's great, but it feels like we need a lot more than that. And that's really how we are trying to be additive. This is not to take anything away from the existing programs because I think those are all great, but I think we can all agree that we need more. That's it.
- [18:42]
A
Yes. You mentioned how AI is really at the center of a Lot of your thinking about the ability of these scholars to make impact. I'm curious. You started at Noble reach in late 2022, right around the time ChatGPT was coming out, maybe just before. And so AI certainly existed before then, but not in the way it does now. And so the intervening few years feel like a few decades, at least subjectively. So I'm curious some of the pivots and some of the transformations and thinking that happened as you were meeting the ChatGPT moment and thinking about how your programs would work in an era with rapid development and evolution of LLMs. And that changes both the thesis for how government deploys technology and also the kinds of skills that you might be looking for. So I'm curious how that moment sort of affected your thinking at noblereach.
- [19:49]
B
Yeah, no, I think it's an insightful question because I think when we were starting, if I was honest about it, I think the dominant theme was probably cybersecurity. It was just very prevalent, it was very known, like how do we get cyber experts? And I think that can span career stages. There are 20 year cyber folks, there are 10 year cyber folks, but we still wanted to go after early career. How can we get a larger funnel in? What I think AI has changed is the velocity and the speed of which the technology is both being developed, but then also needing to be adopted. And what we're also seeing is that it's not only about a technology issue, it's a people issue in that you just don't give the same technology to people like my generation because we're used to adopting technology in a certain way. A 24 year old or 25 year old is a little bit, you know, the way they grow up with it and the way they think about it is very different. So we're used to kind of like really becoming experts in something and then using it and deploying it. And they're like micro learning constantly, like they're testing and learning and innovating very quickly. That by itself is also, you know, we need to be able to have the right kind of managerial structure around that because context is important. But like how to deploy the tech inside with that context is where these young folks become really valuable. And so I think, if I'm honest about it, I think the, you know, the tailwind of what's happening with AI and the need for government to think about like how they use it not only for internal purposes but for citizen services, obviously in your context is national security. Bringing that mindset in has become even More essential. And it's why I kind of feel like we're having our Freedom Forge moment, frankly, a little bit as a country. In Freedom Forge, we looked at potential conflict before World War II and realized our manufacturing capacity was really weak as a government and as a society. And so we brought in private sector folks to help us rebuild that capacity in a meaningful way, because that was going to be the way we competed. I think that's where we are with tech right now. And so I think it becomes important to try to think about, like, how do we pull these talented folks in and do it in a way that we can kind of modernize and, you know, our capacity and capability as a government. And that's not only federal, right? I know this conversation is probably more about federal, but it exists at the state and local level as well, and create that kind of. And this is really the thesis around writing the book the Mission Generation. You know, create a different way of thinking about civic responsibility coexisting with personal ambition, as opposed to saying, like, hey, if you want to do something really cool and innovative in tech, you got to go here. And if you really want to have something that really care about civic responsibility, you come to this world. And we want to be able to show that in a world that we're going into with AI, you know, people are going to have four to six careers going forward. So when I talk to students, you know, I say, look, my dad had one job for 40 years, I had one career. I stayed in my lane with multiple employers. You guys are going to have four to six careers. Why not have one of your careers be public service? I'm not saying be a public servant for your entire career. That resonates. And it actually resonates as something they even start their careers with, because the idea of using that time to figure out what you really care about so that you can build a career based on problems that you care about, as opposed to the institutions that you want to be drawn to or the titles you want to have. I think those two things are getting disrupted in the world of AI, and hopefully we can go back to a place where we're. We're starting to think about building careers based on problems that we really care about, which will be your stabilizing force in a world that we're moving into.
- [23:54]
A
Yeah, so I wanted to follow up on that. You have done a lot of thinking about how to build careers that are meaningful, sort of focusing on what you get out of the career in terms of personal satisfaction and meaning and Impact. That's been the theme of your two books. One of the things you say in your books is that we're undergoing really momentous shifts that are creating a lot of uncertainty. So we've talked some about how technology is playing into that, but also shifts in things like environmental impacts and geopolitics. And so I'm curious how you think about these shifts in terms of what does that mean for people planning out their career or trying to figure out will provide them personal meaning? Like, given the uncertainty we're facing in the world, how does that play into the decisions that people should be thinking about as they, as they, as they chart out what they're going to spend a lot of their sort of waking hours doing?
- [25:01]
B
Yeah, no, it's a great question. And you know, again, take what I'm saying as a point of view in my own observations around it, I don't know if there's a right or wrong around any of this. Right. And I've been humbled by the receptivity in the residents about what we've been writing about. But again, I, you know, I recognize that it's a point of view. And the point of view I think I have, building on the idea that you're going to have four to six careers, is that, you know, over decades now, we've created careers based on stability and security. And that's been the driving career path. And that's around, I think, academic institutions reinforce this even more. So, like, hey, we're preparing you for a career and then you go to the career center and the same cadre of folks are showing up to recruit as if those are the only places that have meaningful jobs that will bring you the right prestige and markers and things of that sort. I also think those are. That world of stability is the riskier proposition. So we write about how stability is the new risk. Seeking stability, I think, is the riskier proposition then acknowledging that we're in a world that's going to be constantly changing. And so building your career with that level of adaptability and agility is more important than stability. So what does that mean? Again, rather than trying to say, hey, I'm going to go do xyz because that's the institution that's prestigious, what problem do you care about? What's your why? Because when the job gets changed, the problem's not going to go away. The way you build fluency around those problems becomes really important. That's why I think, again, there's an opportunity right now because of the disruption that public service can be a place to step into that of a place to really come in and hone your skills for a couple of years. Think about what you really care about coming out of school and what problems really drive you. And then think about whether you want to solve that problem inside of government as an entrepreneur on the outside of government with a not for profit or going into a large company and being an ambassador to it. But I think building careers around problems that you care about are going to become incredibly important. And then you can then build those careers. When you acknowledge that you'll have multiple careers, you can tilt on whether at a certain period of time you're trying to build more financial capital, or you're trying to build more experiential learning capital, as we talk about in the book, or trust capital, the relationships you build. But I think it's that fluency and fluidity. And so I think the mindset of entrepreneurship, not necessarily in the sense that you're going to create a venture, but the sense that you have agency on how you build your career is important. Right? I think that's a mindset that we should be teaching earlier than we do right now because I think we're misleading folks to think that like, hey, there's a path ahead that we think is going to be pretty stable for the next 15, 20 years. And, you know, rather than building the skills to say, you know, how do you, how do you constantly test and learn? How do you act and then get clarity as opposed to wait for clarity and then act, you know, how do you pivot, how do you, how do you maneuver when things go, you know, when you don't get the right signals? And so that's how I talk about it with young folks about where to embrace their careers. And, you know, the two places I recommend is probably either one, doing something around service or being around problems so that you can see how those problems really manifest themselves and become, think about how you would build your career around the problem. Or the second is do something entrepreneurial and joining someone else's entrepreneurial endeavor to understand what uncertainty feels like and how to manage uncertainty. Because I think those two levers will be your navigation tools as you kind of think about building your careers in the world that we're walking into.
- [29:11]
A
So let me dive into the theme of uncertainty a little bit more. So, you know, at the center, we're doing a lot of thinking about the economic impacts of AI and how it's transforming the labor market. And one thing we, we see, we hear is from a lot of young people who are particularly anxious about the job market that they're entering and in in particular, how AI is transforming that job market where there'll be jobs to find, if they find jobs, whether there'll be jobs that will exist for any significant amount of time or whether those jobs will go away as well. We're doing research in this area, we're planning work in this area. But I'm curious how your research into things like mission driven careers intersect with this anxiety that we're seeing from young people and anxiety that's manifested in sort of. We've seen commencement speakers who've been booed because they've leaned into AI and what they see as the positive benefits of AI. And I think this is sort of conflicting with the lived reality that a lot of young graduates are walking into. So I'd love to know how you're thinking about this level of anxiety we're seeing manifesting, especially in young college graduates or people about to enter the job market.
- [30:37]
B
Yeah, look, I think it's easier to sell fear than it is to inspire. Right? And I think that's what our leaders are doing right now. You know, it's easier to scare people than it is to inspire them. And so, you know, are there layoffs happening? Yes. Is it solely because of AI or is that. Are we calling it because of AI? I mean, there's data and you probably have it more than I do. To look at the over hiring that was done right before AI happened came to be. We can look at interest rates going up. There's a lot of different factors that are playing into this as to why corporations, especially the larger ones, the ones with the stable pathways, are saying, hey, we need to slow down hiring as we figure out what the world looks like. I will say, like when I was at Davos, there were a number of CEOs that were going the other way that were saying, look, I'm going to bring in 1,000 young folks and I'm bringing in 1,000 now because this is going to be the first cohort of AI native graduates that will really be able to. The bottleneck isn't the new folks. It's my folks that are 10 years in into my organization because they're the ones protecting their jobs. They don't want to hire new people and they're not adapting AI in the way I want them to. So I think there's going. This story is still yet to be played out. But I completely agree with you that the narrative that we're giving is one where it's easy to kind of call AI the boogeyman and say, therefore there's no jobs that are out there. And I just think that's not the entire story. And I think our politicians, it's easier to again, sell fear. So they sell that. No one wants to lead with that. But I don't think our tech leaders help either. To paint a picture of a world where no one needs to work is not what people want. Right. Work is dignity. The idea that I'm just going to get free income and I don't have to work, this is what being human is about. I think the interesting work in their organizations doing it now are, what are those new jobs look like? What are the new things that get created? No different than when the automotive came. There's a whole industry that went down, but a whole new industry that came up with it. Any major technology that we've had, there's industries that suffered, but then there are new ones that get created that we hadn't even imagined yet. That doesn't mean there's not a transition period here, Right. That we need to step into. And I personally think this is an opportunity for government. Right, because during a transition period where you're trying to get young folks engaged in looking for jobs, people that may not have thought about going into public service before, this is an opportunity to do that and bring them in for a couple of years. Then with that experience, I think a little, a bit of what's going on as well. The sperms are basically saying, hey, look, kids coming right out of school don't have what I'm looking for right away. That's not an AI thing. That's just like, hey, I'm not sure they're ready yet. Are they willing to hire people that have spent two years doing something else? Absolutely. So can they spend two years in government and then build those skills and then kind of come out? So I think there's some creative things that can be done that I think people are researching now. But I do think, and I'm not trying to be like a tech optimist, like, everything's great, tech's let it run. We need regulation, we need boundaries, we need guidelines, all of that. Right. So I'm trying to be pragmatic around it, but I also do feel that the doomsayer narrative is the easier one to sell. And I think it's a human emotion. Like, we focus on downside more than we do upside. We figure we focus on fear more than we do, you know, happiness. And so you Know, our systems kind of feed that.
- [34:55]
A
So, so let's, let's wrap up on, on a positive note. So I think a lot of our listeners think that AI is the most consequential technology of our time, maybe the most consequential technology ever. And they're thinking about what can they do to positively shape that technology to maximize its benefit on their lives, on society generally. I'd love to know if you have one piece of advice that you can share for people who, who are thinking like that. And I know for authors, getting them to narrow down to one thing is very difficult, but maybe the top couple of things that you think you would advise people who really think about how to shape this technology so it leaves the world a better place.
- [35:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think the number one thing is I'm going to leave you with one thought would be to have an experimentation mindset, right. Like, I just think to feel like we have the answers before we use it or try it, you'll be left behind and the mindset to embrace it and to figure out, like, how it can benefit you, how it can benefit your community, how can it benefit your society is going to be about engaging with it and experimenting with it. And I say experimenting intentionally because I mean that, like, that means, like, you're going to spend hours doing stuff and it may not give you what you want, but that's learning. Like, you're figuring that out then, right? But then in that process, you'll find two or three things that you're like, oh, man, like, this has saved me all sorts of time, or, oh, wait, I can start my own business around this. That's what I think the power of it can be. You know, again, we don't talk about it at a societal level, but it's a great leveling platform, probably the greatest that we've had. I mean, people talk about it with the Internet where like, oh, retailers now can compete with big brick and mortar retailers in a way that you couldn't before. But you know, think about what the impact on education if we deploy it properly, right. And people being able to have more personalized education. You look at the work that Joe Lamont's doing at Alpha School, it's really showing that, like, students really actually need to be going into doing the education part for only two to three hours a day. And then you can spend the rest of the time having them really learn life skills. And that's all AI driven. Those are the kinds of experimentation of models and reimagining that I think what we're lacking more is courage because it requires letting go of things that we had before to go build what we need to go the new world that we're going into. And I think what's going to happen, the bifurcation that we're going to see is the people holding on to what was are going to fall further and further behind. And those that are willing to reimagine what can be will move ahead.
- [38:03]
A
Good lessons for our listeners to think about as they think about what they're going to do next in their careers. I think that's it for this episode of the AI Policy Podcast. Thank you for taking time out of your packed schedule to join with us today and talk about tech talent in government and how to have a mission driven career. Your latest book is the Mission Generation. You are the CEO of the Noble Reach foundation, so you can find more information about that@noblereach.org but really, thank you for taking time to chat with us and for your insights into a variety of issues.
- [38:52]
B
Well, thank you for having me. One of the thoughts we try to leave the book with is that 250 years ago, our founding fathers created a system based on independence. And it's been a remarkable system that we've all benefited from. And I think the opportunity and the challenge for what we call the Mission Generation will be building a system now of interdependence. And, you know, because I think it's going to be incredibly important to have that interdependence as we move forward. And I think AI, you know, whether we like it or not, it's going to have to play a role in it and how we leverage it so that we use it as a way that we can, you know, since AI goes after IQ over eq, use it to bring fluency, to enable people to work across sectors to solve big problems is, I think, the opportunity in front of us.
- [39:38]
A
All right, well, thank you and thank you again for joining us.
- [39:41]
B
Take care. Thank you very much.
- [39:43]
A
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the AI Policy Podcast. We'll see you next week for the next episode. In the meantime, you can see more of our work@csis.org?
- [39:55]
B
sam.