Labor

Our goal at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is universal, meaningful connectivity. Under our logo, we say that broadband builds opportunities and strengthens communities. But we haven’t been living under a rock. We know technology does not always build opportunity or strengthen communities. And right now, a real bleakness surrounds technology and what it is doing to us—or might do to us. If you work in digital inclusion, that can give you pause. What exactly are we working to include people in?

For the first time, Democrats are now more likely than Republicans to be concerned about the growing role of artificial intelligence in daily life and its potential to take jobs. In a June Pew Research Center survey of U.S.

In July 2026, All Tech Is Human and the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab convened paired workshops in New York City to examine how agentic and generative AI are reshaping work from two different vantage points: those of mid-level professionals and senior leaders. The groups were asked mirrored questions to enable comparison. Both described the same broad shifts: AI is not simply automating tasks, but reconfiguring the lived experience of work itself, with technical deployments currently outpacing organizational and human adaptation.

Telecommunications firms have been touting AI as a cost saver, using it to justify thousands of layoffs. But while the humans are disappearing, the costs aren’t always following suit.

This paper examines changes in the labor market for occupations exposed to generative artificial intelligence using high-frequency administrative data from the largest payroll software provider in the United States. We present six facts that characterize these shifts. We find that since the widespread adoption of generative AI, early-career workers (ages 22-25) in the most AI-exposed occupations have experienced a 13 percent relative decline in employment even after controlling for firm-level shocks.

Sen Adam Schiff (D-CA) wants to tax AI companies for their “disruptive” effects on the economy and the workforce, he said, joining the likes of Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats taking on a more populist tone about the booming industry. “I would like to see the Congress identify what disruptive impacts should the AI companies pay for,” Sen Schiff said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is turning her attention to AI's impact on workers, launching a series of listening sessions

AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI regularly publish reports on how people are using products like Claude and ChatGPT, but they only release the data they want us to see, AI researchers say.  “There is no independent source to corroborate it,” says Anka Reuel, a computer science PhD candidate at the Stanford Trustworthy AI Research Lab. Reuel is co-lead of a new research project, called the AI Observatory, that aims to fill the gap.

After several stalls and an administration overhaul, Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment money has at last started flowing into states, and—according to rural service provider Vistabeam—households.

Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA), the public agency expanding connectivity and digital opportunity statewide, announces $3.3 million in grant awards for capital improvements to make economic and social opportunity possible for individuals and communities through digital access.