Gina Raimondo

Right now, the incentives are such that a company lays a lot of people off today and their stock price surges tomorrow.

It is too easy to hit the easy button of layoffs.

Companies need different incentives.

Quite frankly, we need a new system where it's more expensive to abandon workers than to retrain them.

How ...

We all respond to incentives.

How about we pilot tax credits or other economic incentives that reward companies for worker redeployment, for entry-level hiring, for reinvesting AI productivity gains into new jobs?

We have spent decades, if not longer, perfecting the incentives for investing in machines.

We need to do the same so companies invest in people.

And here's the reality.

It's in all of our interests to have a smooth transition to an AI economy.

It isn't business versus workers.

Nobody benefits with a recession, excessive AI regulations, social unrest and political violence and divisiveness.

By the way, it's in everyone's benefit to reach this exciting potential of AI innovation.

It's not corporate charity to do this.

Last time I checked, agents didn't walk into the store and buy things.

Humans do that, and they need money in their pocket to do it.

So it turns out America has seen a similar movie to this before, when we didn't plan for an economic transition.

And by the way, it didn't end well.

It happened when American companies moved their manufacturing overseas, mostly to Asia, chasing cheaper labor.