Jobs & Artificial Intelligence

AI can make a worker better at their job. It should never get to make the worker optional.

The resistance to AI in the workplace rarely means banning the technology outright. More often it means fighting for consent, compensation, and a guaranteed human decision-maker in the loop. That's the model this platform builds on — plank by plank, industry by industry.

Protecting Truck Drivers

Trucking remains one of the largest sources of good-paying, no-college-degree-required jobs in the country, and it's also one of the industries furthest along in the push toward full autonomy. We should draw a clear line now, before it's too late: every commercial truck on American roads must have a licensed human driver behind the wheel.

That doesn't mean rejecting the technology. AI-assisted navigation, route optimization, scheduling, and safety monitoring can all make trucking safer and more efficient, and drivers should have every one of those tools available to them. What AI should not do is replace the driver entirely. A human in the cab means someone is legally and personally accountable when something goes wrong, someone is available for loading, unloading, and the hundred small judgment calls a route throws at you that no model has fully anticipated, and someone is present for the emergencies — a blown tire, a medical event, severe weather — that autonomous systems still don't reliably handle. This single requirement protects millions of solid middle-class jobs and keeps a human being accountable for multi-ton vehicles sharing the road with our families.

Protecting Delivery Workers

The same principle applies to the last mile. Every package delivered in this country — whether it's UPS, FedEx, DoorDash, or Instacart — should be delivered by a human being, not a drone or a sidewalk robot. This isn't nostalgia. Delivery jobs are an enormous source of flexible, accessible income for millions of Americans, and they come with something automated delivery never will: a human who can notice a package doesn't belong on this porch, help an elderly customer carry something up the stairs, or simply be a familiar, trusted face in the neighborhood.

We will push every level of government — city, state, and federal — to require a human delivery workforce, and we will support and organize consumer boycotts of any company that tries to quietly replace its human delivery workers with drones or robots to pad its margins. This is not an abstract policy debate for most families; it's a feeding-the-children issue, and it's one of the rare economic causes that can unite people who agree on almost nothing else.

Protecting Healthcare Workers

No doctor or nurse position in America should be eliminated and replaced by an algorithm. Medicine is not just diagnosis — it's judgment, trust, bedside presence, and accountability, and none of those transfer to a model no matter how good its outputs look on paper.

AI absolutely has a role in healthcare. It can already help flag risks earlier, cut down on administrative burden, and support clinicians with faster access to information, and we should keep pushing that kind of tool forward aggressively, especially as a way to ease documented staffing shortages. But a tool that makes a nurse or doctor more effective is fundamentally different from a system designed to replace them outright. Physician and nursing positions are among the best-paying, most respected jobs in the country, and protecting them protects both the workforce and the quality and humanity of the care patients actually receive.

Farm Workers

American agriculture runs on labor that, for decades, has too often had to enter the country illegally simply because there was no functional legal alternative. That's bad for farmers, bad for workers, and bad for the country. We should fix it directly, with a legal, structured farm worker visa program built on real vetting, verified identification, and enforceable legal protections.

Farmers get access to a reliable, documented workforce they can plan around instead of one that can disappear at the first sign of an enforcement sweep. Workers get legal status, the standing to report abuse or wage theft without fear of deportation, and the basic right to ask for fair pay and safe conditions without it costing them everything. Consumers get a more stable, less disrupted food supply. This is a rare policy where doing the right thing and doing the economically smart thing are exactly the same policy. Everybody wins, including the country as a whole.

The Right to talk to a Human Being

This isn't a hypothetical fight; it's already bipartisan. A bill in Congress, backed by lawmakers from both parties, would require call centers to disclose upfront whether you're talking to a person or an AI system, and let you ask to be transferred to a real, U.S.-based human being if you want one. That's exactly the right instinct, and it shouldn't stop at call centers.

We propose a broader right to a human being for every essential service interaction — banking, insurance, healthcare billing, utilities, and government services included. Companies can use AI to speed up simple requests and cut wait times, and should. But when a customer asks for a person, or when the issue is complicated, disputed, or financially significant, a real human being with the authority to actually fix the problem has to be reachable, not optional.

The definition of good customer service didn't used to require a debate. It shouldn't now, either — a person should be able to talk to a person.

Protecting Teachers and the Classroom

AI tutoring tools are genuinely useful. They can give a struggling student instant, patient help with a math problem at nine at night when no teacher is available, and free up a teacher's time from grading and paperwork to focus on the kids in front of them. What they cannot do is notice that a normally talkative kid has gone quiet for three weeks, or that a bright student is coasting because nobody's challenged them, or the hundred other things a present, attentive adult catches that a screen doesn't.

We should push AI tools into classrooms aggressively as support for teachers, not as their replacement. No school district should be permitted to use AI instruction to reduce certified teaching staff or increase class sizes; the technology's job is to make one good teacher more effective for more students, not to make the teacher optional.

A classroom without a present adult who knows every kid's name isn't an innovation. It's a room full of children being supervised by software.

Protecting Warehouse and Retail Workers

Warehouses and retail stores are quietly becoming one of the fastest-automating corners of the American economy: robotic picking systems, increasingly autonomous fulfillment centers, and self-checkout aisles replacing the entry-level jobs that have historically been many young workers' first job, first paycheck, and first reference. These are often the jobs that teach a seventeen-year-old how to show up on time and work as part of a team, and they're disappearing quietly, store by store, warehouse by warehouse.

We're not proposing a ban on warehouse or retail automation; that technology genuinely makes goods cheaper and some jobs safer. We propose a floor: large retailers and fulfillment operations above a certain size should maintain a minimum ratio of human staff to automated systems, and self-checkout-only stores should be required to keep a staffed, human-served checkout lane open and reasonably accessible at all times.

Somebody's first job teaches them more than how to scan a barcode. It's worth protecting on purpose, not losing by accident.

An AI Displacement and Retraining Fund

America already built a model for this once, for a different kind of economic disruption. For decades, Trade Adjustment Assistance gave workers who lost their jobs to import competition access to retraining, income support, and job search help — a real acknowledgment that when national policy creates economic winners and losers, the losers deserve a landing pad. That program lapsed in 2022, and a bipartisan bill to revive it has been sitting in Congress ever since. We should pass it, and use the occasion to build the AI-era version it was always going to need.

We propose an AI Displacement and Retraining Fund, paid into by large companies in proportion to how much of their workforce they eliminate through automation over a defined period, and used to fund retraining, income bridges, and job placement for the workers displaced. Companies that automate responsibly, alongside their workforce, pay little or nothing. Companies that automate a warehouse or a call center overnight and walk away help fund what comes next for the people they let go.

AI is going to change millions of jobs, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone. The only real choice is whether workers get a landing pad or a cliff

Protecting Legal Professionals

Every person in this country who needs legal representation deserves a licensed human attorney responsible for their case — not a chatbot standing in for one. AI legal tools can be genuinely useful for research, document review, and drafting assistance, and lawyers should use every one of them to work faster and serve more clients. What they cannot do is replace the attorney whose license, judgment, and accountability stand behind the advice being given.

This matters for justice, and it matters for the economy. Legal representation is one of the last professions where a person's fate is at stake — a custody dispute, a criminal charge, a contract that could make or break a small business — gets the individualized judgment of another accountable human being. Protecting that keeps tens of billions of dollars flowing through American law firms, courthouses, and communities, instead of being quietly routed through a foreign technology company's server farm.

Human Oversight Mandate

Data Rights & Transparency

Require human review and final approval for all critical AI-driven decisions in licensed professions, ensuring accountability and ethical standards.

Establish clear ownership and access rights for worker-generated data, preventing its use to automate away jobs without consent or compensation.

AI Impact Assessments

Retraining & Redeployment

Mandate pre-deployment impact assessments for AI systems on employment, wages, and working conditions, with public reporting requirements.

Create and fund robust federal programs for retraining and redeploying workers displaced by AI, focusing on new human-centric roles.

Fair Licensing Standards

Anti-Discrimination AI

Update professional licensing to recognize new human-in-the-loop skills and prevent AI from devaluing existing certifications.

Implement strong legal frameworks to prevent AI from perpetuating or exacerbating discrimination in hiring, promotion, and compensation.

Collective Bargaining Rights

Public Sector Innovation

Protect and expand collective bargaining rights for workers to negotiate AI implementation and its impact on their jobs and conditions.

Invest in public sector AI development that prioritizes job creation and augmentation, rather than solely cost reduction and displacement.

Global Worker Standards

Advocate for international agreements on AI ethics and labor standards to prevent a race to the bottom in worker protections globally.

Further Reading & Answers

The Fight So Far

Explore our comprehensive research into how AI is impacting various professions, backed by real data and expert analysis.

Common Questions

We tackle the hardest questions about AI, jobs, and our policy proposals head-on, providing honest and direct answers.

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