Are calls for unity too weak and too generic to move Americans? What are the hard truths that stand in the way of unity?
Educator, activist, and author Tim Shriver joined the Braver Angels podcast to talk about his new book, "The Call to Unite," and the budding nationwide movement to unite America.
The Call to Unite | Tim Shriver with John Wood, Jr. & April Lawsonwww.youtube.com
AI is transforming the workplace faster than ever. Experts warn that automation could reshape jobs, wages, and opportunities for millions of American workers.
In recent years, American workers have been going through an unprecedented experiment in how we work. During the COVID pandemic and social distancing, U.S. businesses embraced the latest online technologies to vastly expand remote work. That, in turn, ushered in the slow creep of artificial intelligence (AI) applications into every crack and seam of society, including in the workplace.
If 2023 was about increasing adoption of AI coming out of the pandemic, experts are saying 2025-26 will be when companies implement deeper changes in the workplace based on ever more pervasive AI.
New technology brings both positives and negatives. In the past, the introduction of technologies like tractors, electricity, telephones, and mechanization in general produced huge increases in labor efficiency (known as productivity). But in the short term, many Americans suddenly found that their skills were obsolete, and they joined the unemployment line.
With new job training and skill updates, most of those people were able to find new employment. Sometimes the new jobs were not as good as the old employment, with lower wages, but other times the new jobs were better. Over time, young people in particular got trained for the new economy, and most everyday Americans enjoyed greater prosperity. The United States became attractive to everyday people around the world for its well-off middle class.
What will happen this time with the new wave of AI-driven workplace technologies? Will they create greater productivity and new types of jobs that will benefit most Americans? Or will AI result in employment losses, declining wages, and poorer quality jobs? Several new studies give us a clue, and so far, the results show a red flag.
No question, AI has proliferated in the workplace. A recent workforce poll of nearly 20,000 workers, by the prominent pollster Gallup, found that the percentage of U.S. employees who say they have used AI in their jobs at least a few times a year has nearly doubled since its 2023 poll, from 21% to 40%. The percentage of U.S. employees frequently using AI in their jobs has also nearly doubled to 19%.
This AI surge is particularly noticeable in white-collar jobs, with over a quarter of these employees reporting frequent AI use. The industries with the highest percentages of frequent AI users include technology (50%), professional services (34%), and finance (32%). In comparison, frequent AI use by production and front-line workers has remained essentially flat for the past two years.
But will AI result in job losses? Many projections from a range of sources make this difficult to predict. Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest investment banks, has projected that 300 million jobs around the world could be lost to AI automation over the next 10 years, affecting 25% of the global labor market. The widely discussed Scenario AI 2027 report quotes experts who expect quick implementation over the next decade with an impact “exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution.”
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, one of the largest software companies in the world for business productivity applications, says that AI is already doing 30% to 50% of all the work at his company, and he believes that growth will continue. Recently, Microsoft announced two rounds of layoffs affecting 16,000 workers, driven in part by AI efficiencies.
Those are the projections, but what about today? Are we seeing impacts from the recent rise of AI use in the workplace?
A new study from Stanford University’s Erik Brynjolfsson found that young workers aged 22–25 in “highly AI-exposed” jobs, such as software developers, accountants, and customer service agents, are being replaced by AI at a rapid rate. Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, this demographic has experienced a 13% decline in employment. Labor research firm Revelio Labs has found that postings for entry-level jobs have declined by about 35% since January 2023. These studies confirm what others, such as the New York Federal Reserve, have found, namely that entry-level positions and work opportunities for recent college graduates have “deteriorated noticeably.”
“There’s definitely evidence that AI is beginning to have a big effect,” says Stanford’s Brynjolfsson. "This is the fastest, broadest change that I've seen," second only to the shift to remote work during the pandemic.
And so far, the expected rise in worker efficiency has not arrived. One survey from the online labor platform Upwork polled 2,500 professionals, finding that 77% of workers say that generative AI has actually decreased their productivity and increased their workloads. According to the report, many workers feel “overwhelmed by the added workload and complexity it brings,” even as 71% of full-time employees report being burned out, and 65% report struggling with increased employer demands.
AI proponents preach that it's necessary to have patience with the new technologies. Even the most transformative technologies, such as steam power and electricity, took decades to generate large-scale economic effects. Just like with the old technologies, they say eventually new jobs will be created and labor productivity will rise. Labor productivity is important because when a company or society can produce more products and services with less labor, that, in theory, results in increased wealth. Various experts have weighed in with a range of predictions regarding productivity increases, from 15% over ten years (Goldman Sachs) to as high as 34% (McKinsey Global Institute). But other economic experts have doubts that the new AI technologies will unfold like past breakthrough technologies.
Economist Robert Gordon showed in his magisterial volume, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” that the enormous increases in productivity that made modern America what it is today occurred in the hundred-year period from 1870 to 1970. That's when now-familiar technologies like automobiles, washing machines, refrigerators, running water, toilets, telephones, light bulbs, elevators, and other consumer goods vastly increased our quality of life, as well as spurred the creation of tens of millions of new jobs and gave a huge boost to the economy.
But after 1970, productivity declined, and Gordon and other economists showed how productivity increases from the computer and internet revolutions, outside of a few short years in the 1990s, have actually been relatively small. Nobel laureate and economist Robert Solow famously said, "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
Moreover, while the productivity gains over the last 40 years have been modest in scale, the benefits have not flowed equally into average workers’ pockets in the form of higher wages. Indeed, wages have been stagnant since the 1970s. Instead, the increased value coming from productivity increases has gone into the pockets of a smaller, wealthy class, resulting in growing inequality and alienation (amidst slogans about the “1% versus 99%”).
The economist Thomas Piketty and his best-selling book, “Capital In the 21st Century,” advanced his now-famous formula, r > g, meaning that when an economy is growing due to technological innovation, profits earned from investment and finance will always grow faster than increases in wages. That’s a problem, in part because of who owns the new technology—the wealthy tech companies and their wealthy stockholders. With so few Americans owning any substantial amount of stock and having to rely instead on stagnant wages, inequality has grown as part of the natural dynamic of how a capitalist economy is propelled forward by investment and technological innovation.
In the short term, AI impacts that are reducing the number of entry level positions can be expected to increase the anxiety and pressure on young people. Many youth are feeling abandoned as they see their future prospects apparently slipping away. A recent study found that 35% of Gen X and 33% of millennials feel worse off than their parents, far more than the 19% of baby boomers and 17% of Gen Z who say the same. Job losses due to AI joins crushing student loan debt, stagnant wages, and soaring housing costs as key factors in causing many Gen Xers and millennials to doubt if they will ever achieve the same financial stability as their parents.
Hope is in short supply among many youths, and demagogues will be able to fill that gap with their articulation of young people’s sense of victimization and outrage. That is a worrisome prospect.
AI is changing childhood. Kevin Frazier explains why it's critical for parents and mentors to start having the “AI talk” and teach kids safe, responsible AI use.
“[I]t is a massively more powerful and scary thing than I knew about.” That’s how Adam Raine’s dad characterized ChatGPT when he reviewed his son’s conversations with the AI tool. Adam tragically died by suicide. His parents are now suing OpenAI and Sam Altman, the company’s CEO, based on allegations that the tool contributed to his death.
This tragic story has rightfully caused a push for tech companies to institute changes and for lawmakers to institute sweeping regulations. While both of those strategies have some merit, computer code and AI-related laws will not address the underlying issue: our kids need guidance from their parents, educators, and mentors about how and when to use AI.
I don’t have kids. I’m fortunate to be an uncle to two kiddos and to be involved in the lives of my friends’ youngsters. However, I do have first-hand experience with childhood depression and anorexia. Although that was in the pre-social media days and well before the time of GPTs, I’m confident that what saved me then will go a long way toward helping kids today avoid or navigate the negative side effects that can result from excessive use of AI companions.
Kids increasingly have access to AI tools that mirror key human characteristics. The models seemingly listen, empathize, joke, and, at times, bully, coerce, and manipulate. It’s these latter attributes that have led to horrendous and unacceptable outcomes. As AI becomes more commonly available and ever more sophisticated, the ease with which users of all ages may come to rely on AI for sensitive matters will only increase.
Major AI labs are aware of these concerns. Following the tragic loss of Raine, OpenAI has announced several changes to its products and processes to more quickly identify and address users seemingly in need of additional support. Notably, these interventions come with a cost. Altman made clear that the prioritization of teen safety would necessarily involve reduced privacy. The company plans to track user behavior to estimate their age. If a user is flagged as a minor, they will be subject to various checks on how they use the product, including limitations on late-night use, notification of family or emergency services in the wake of messages suggestive of immediate self-harm, and limitations on the responses they will receive when the model is prompted on sexual or self-harm topics.
Legislators, too, are tracking this emerging risk to teen well-being. California is poised to pass AB 1064, a bill imposing manifold requirements on all operators of AI companions. Among several other requirements, this bill would direct operators to prioritize factually accurate answers to prompts over the users’ beliefs or preferences. It would also prevent operators from deploying AI companions with a foreseeable risk of encouraging troubling behavior, such as disordered eating. These mandates, which sound somewhat feasible and defensible on paper, may have unintended consequences in practice.
Consider, for example, whether operators worried about encouraging disordered eating among teens will ask all users to regularly certify whether they have had concerns about their weight or diet in the last week. These and other invasive questions may shield operators from liability but carry a grave risk of exacerbating a user’s mental well-being. Speaking from experience, reminders of your condition can often make things much worse—sending you further down a cycle of self-doubt.
The upshot is that technical solutions or legal interventions will not ultimately be the thing that helps our kids make full use of the numerous benefits of AI while also steering clear of its worst traits. It’s time to normalize a new “talk.” Just as parents and trusted mentors have long played a critical role in steering their kids through the sensitive topic of sex, they can serve as an important source of information on the responsible use of AI tools.
Kids need to have someone in their lives they can openly share their AI questions with. They need to be able to disclose troubling chats to someone without fear of being shamed or punished. They need to have a reliable and knowledgeable source of information on how and why AI works. Absent this sort of AI mentorship, we are effectively putting our kids into the driver’s seat of the most powerful technological tool without even having taken a written exam on the rules of the road.
My niece and nephew are well short of the age of needing the “AI talk.” If asked to give it, I’d be happy to do so. I spend my waking hours researching AI, talking to AI experts, and studying related areas of the law. I’m ready and willing to serve as their AI go-to.
We—educators, legislators, and AI companies—need to help other parents and mentors prepare for a similar conversation. This doesn’t mean training parents to become AI savants, but it does mean assisting parents find courses and resources that are accessible and accurate. From basic FAQs that walk parents through the “AI talk” to community events that invite parents to come learn about AI, there’s tried-and-true strategies to ready parents for this pivotal and ongoing conversation.
Parents surely don’t need another thing added to their extensive and burdensome responsibilities, but this is a talk we cannot avoid. The AI labs are steered more by profit than child well-being. Lawmakers are not well-known for crafting nuanced tech policy. We cannot count exclusively on tech fixes and new laws to tackle the social and cultural ramifications of AI use. This is one of those things that can and must involve family and community discourse.
Love, support, and, to be honest, distractions from my parents, my coaches, and friends were the biggest boost to my own recovery. And while we should surely hold AI labs accountable and spur our lawmakers to impose sensible regulations, we should also develop the AI literacy required to help our youngsters learn the pros and cons of AI tools.
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Author of the Appleseed AI substack.
US President Donald Trump reacts next to Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, after speaking at the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21, 2025.
In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s— apparently temporary— suspension from late-night TV, a (tragically small) number of prominent conservatives and Republicans have taken exception to the Trump administration’s comfort with “jawboning” critics into submission.
Sen. Ted Cruz condemned the administration’s “mafioso behavior.” He warned that “going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again — wins the White House … they will silence us.” Cruz added during his Friday podcast. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”
Ben Shapiro, the MAGA-adjacent media mogul, concurred. While he offered little sympathy for Kimmel, he too warned against the moral hazard problem. “I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false,” Shapiro said. “Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot.”
There were others, including Sen. Rand Paul. But not many. They should be congratulated for offering any pushback against the new right’s strange mix of bullying and moral panic in the wake of the heinous murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Indeed, it’s remarkable that the dual response to Kirk’s killing has been for his admirers to simultaneously praise Kirk’s commitment to free speech while showing very little such commitment themselves.
The cognitive dissonance has been remarkable. Kirk — rightly— ridiculed the concept of “hate speech” as a legal category. “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free,” Kirk posted last year.
Yet, in response to the at times ugly, gross and evil speech that followed Kirk’s murder, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi promised that “especially after what happened to Charlie,” Trump’s Justice Department “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
The president, as is so often the case, made the issue about himself, saying that if news coverage about him is too lopsidedly negative “that’s no longer free speech.” When network news casts a good story in a bad light, Trump said, “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
But there’s a problem with the primary argument offered by Cruz, Shapiro and others on the right in response to the administration’s heel turn on the 1st Amendment. And the problem is not that they’re wrong. Cruz and Shapiro are obviously correct to worry that a future Democratic administration could exploit the precedents Trump is laying down to target right-wing media. Indeed, many argue — correctly — that Trump is exploiting precedents laid down by the last Democratic administration. This is oft-repeated argument for retribution: “They did it to us first.”
Again, the problem with the “they did it to us first” and the “they could do this to us later” arguments — about censorship but also “lawfare,” congressional redistricting, etc. — is not that they’re wrong. It’s that they sidestep the wrongness of the deeds themselves.
Just for purposes of illustration, consider that Kirk’s murder was wrong, regardless of anything he said or anything you might believe he said. Murder is wrong independent of any other considerations (if there are mitigating factors for taking a life, we stop calling it murder). If a right-winger kills some prominent left-wing influencer as “payback,” that would be wrong too. As a matter of moral logic, bad acts cannot be justified by other bad acts. We are all taught this from childhood: Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Unfortunately, because of the tribal logic of our time, this ancient moral precept has been supplanted by the “Chicago way” — any transgression that they visit upon us must be repaid with interest.
I don’t condemn the argument that conservatives should be wary of reaping later what they are sowing now. Warning that they might be on the receiving end of the Chicago way the next time Democrats are in power just may be the only argument that many on the right are willing to buy right now. But I do lament how tribalism causes each tribe to forgo arguments based on objective standards. Using the government to punish critical speech is wrong, regardless of who is in power and regardless of whether the criticism is right or fair.
When you argue that you have to fight fire with fire, not only does everything get burned, you let your opponents’ indefensible behavior become your new standard for defensible behavior.
Oh, just for the record, you don’t fight fire with fire. You fight it with water. And a lot of people could use a splash of cold water right about now.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
Rep. Angie Craig’s No Social Media at School Act would ban TikTok, Instagram & Snapchat during K-12 school hours. See what’s in the bill.
Gen Z’s worst nightmare: TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat couldn’t be used during school hours.
Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN2) introduced the No Social Media at School Act, which would require social media companies to use “geofencing” to block access to their products on K-12 school grounds during school hours.
The bill carves out exceptions for push notification of weather alerts, Amber alerts for missing children, and emergency responders.
The specification of “school hours” means social media couldn’t even be used in the cafeteria at lunch or in the hallways between classes. However, it could still be used on school campuses after hours. For example, posting photos and videos at night from football games on the gridiron, or from school talent shows in the auditorium.
The bill also carves out multiple examples of websites or apps that don’t qualify as social media and wouldn’t be subject to a ban. These include: email, Wikipedia, e-commerce like Amazon and eBay, videoconferencing like Zoom, and (perhaps controversially) gaming.
In 2023, Florida became the first state to restrict cell phones in schools statewide. Just in the two years since then, a groundswell of 34 states across the political spectrum have passed policies either restricting or banning cell phones in schools.
In summer 2025 alone, similar policies were enacted by blue state Oregon, swing state North Carolina, and red state Ohio.
As education policies are generally set at the municipal and state level, no member of Congress appears to have introduced legislation banning or restricting cell phones in schools nationwide.
The closest might be the Focus on Learning Act, bipartisan legislation encouraging school districts to adopt phone-free classrooms by establishing a federal grant program to pay for lockable pouches and magnetized containers. The legislation has not yet received a vote.
But even if enacted, it wouldn’t directly change public policy, just nudge it through incentives. This bill, though, would directly change public policy. While it still wouldn’t ban cell phones themselves in schools, banning social media would certainly curb the main thing teens do on their cell phones.
Supporters argue that social media is distracting tens of millions of children from both education and face-to-face interactions with peers.
“We all know how negatively social media is impacting our students’ mental health, attention span, and ability to focus—especially at school,” Rep. Craig said in a press release. “Schools should be places for learning and socializing, not scrolling.”
“While Minnesota's teachers and administrators work hard to create a safe and engaging environment for our students, we have to hold Big Tech accountable for how their platforms are impacting our kids,” Rep. Craig continued. “My bill requiring tech companies to block access to social media during school hours is a start.”
Opponents counter that the answer is to use social media in schools in a curtailed and responsible way, rather than banning it entirely. They say that when done right, social media could actually help education.
For example, Matt Evans at the University of San Diego wrote an article titled “Social Media in Education: 13 Ideas for the Classroom.”
The bill awaits a potential vote in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
It has not yet attracted any cosponsors, from either party—despite the increasingly bipartisan consensus on banning or restricting cell phones in classrooms at the state and municipal levels.
Jesse Rifkin is a freelance journalist with The Fulcrum. Don’t miss his report, Congress Bill Spotlight, on The Fulcrum. Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
Congress Bill Spotlight: Banning Trump Administration From Renaming Naval Ship Harvey Milk
Congress Bill Spotlight: Making Trump Assassination Attempt a July 13 National Holiday
