Law firms embrace artificial intelligence to streamline research. Human resource leaders use it to plan. And manufacturing companies deploy it for quality assurance. AI is now everywhere in the workplace, but what does that mean for workers? Will fast-changing technologies amplify their impact or take their jobs?
Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and Americans for Responsible Innovation have partnered to address these questions, producing a report that provides a roadmap to guide AI workforce policy. The report offers actionable policy recommendations for data and measurement to inform policymakers’ responses to AI as well as investments in workforce development and education and social safety nets to support workers.
“We want to support the dignity of work in the age of AI,” said Yong Suk Lee, associate professor of technology, economy and global affairs at the Keough School and director of the Future of Labor Lab at the school’s McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business. “This means informing smart policy options that prioritize workers, helping them leverage new technologies while mitigating the real risks these tools bring.”
Identifying smart policy options
The paper provides policy options across four areas:
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Data, research and measurement to help policymakers respond more effectively to the challenges AI presents. Providing access to more high-quality data will help policymakers monitor changes in the labor market and make adjustments to help workers, the report says. To facilitate this, it advocates that policymakers make existing data collection systems more flexible and also coordinate information sharing across agencies and organizations.
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Workforce development and education to help workers adapt so that AI augments their productivity rather than replacing them. Recommendations include modernizing education systems, in part by teaching AI literacy in K-12 and higher education as well as career and technical education. The report also calls for fostering broader skills that complement AI, including critical thinking, creativity and social skills. It also advocates for expanding models to finance learning (such as income-share agreements or outcome-based loans) to help workers access quality training. Finally, it calls for investing in infrastructure to support lifelong learning opportunities.
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Social safety nets to help workers displaced by AI. Recognizing that lawmakers hold a range of views on these programs, the report’s authors tout automatic stabilizers as a possible solution. Under this approach, changing labor market conditions would trigger social safety measures to scale up or down in response to real-time needs. The report also identifies other options that could support workers, including unemployment and wage insurance, tax credits (such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit), subsidized jobs, health insurance and basic income programs.
- Regional and industry-level interventions to address the inequalities that AI may intensify as talent and resources cluster in larger cities. In regions with strong growth but a shortage of trained workers, interventions could focus on workforce training and matching workers with firms and industries. In deindustrialized or economically depressed areas, interventions might focus on broader economic development efforts. Although the United States has limited evidence on industrial policy, the report suggests lawmakers might look to the Tech Hubs program from the CHIPS and Science Act as a possible model. The program funded regions to invest in critical and emerging technologies, seeking to ensure that the jobs and economic growth that come with technological innovation reach different geographic areas.
Importantly, the report focuses on providing options for policymakers to consider rather than dictating an agenda, said John Soroushian, senior policy director at Americans for Responsible Innovation and one of the report’s co-authors.
“We focused on providing a range of ideas to support proactive solutions,” said Souroushian, who co-led an initiative that informed congressional work on a national AI strategy. “Our goal was to offer evidence-based options so policymakers can implement the ones that make sense to them.”
An ethical approach to AI
The report comes as public conversations about AI increasingly examine its ethical implications, thanks in part to global leaders such as Pope Leo XIV. The pontiff chose his name as a nod to Pope Leo XIII, whose landmark encyclical “Rerum Novarum” underscored the rights and dignity of workers. Some of his earliest remarks focused on navigating the challenges and opportunities of AI in ways that support human dignity.
Notre Dame’s research collaboration fits within this larger context, said Lee, who is also program chair in technology ethics for the University’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, part of the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative.
As a labor economist, Yong Suk Lee is interested in understanding how AI affects workers and their livelihoods. He is working to inform AI policy in ways that prioritize workers and help them adapt to new technologies.
Americans for Responsible Innovation advocates for using technology in the public interest and the Keough School, as part of a preeminent global Catholic research university, approaches global problems through the lens of human dignity.
“We framed our research around supporting the dignity of workers during a time of rapid change,” said Lee, a faculty fellow of the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Pulte Institute for Global Development and Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. “This human-centered approach to technology is crucial to guiding and informing policy in ways that help workers adapt, thrive and flourish.”
The report draws upon Lee’s ongoing contributions as an expert on the future of work. He frequently publishes scholarly research on technologies such as robotics and AI. In March, he oversaw a Notre Dame workshop on AI and labor policy held at the Keough School Washington Office.
The conversation included contributions from more than dozen experts in government, civil society and the private sector. Contributors shared perspectives on how AI has impacted labor markets so far, how AI adopters and developers view it and what effective policy might look like. These conversations continued after the workshop and led to the writing of the new report.
Lee will join Soroushian and several of his other co-authors to highlight key findings from the report at a Sept. 18 policy forum in Washington, D.C. Afterward, Lee and two of his co-authors, Michael Horrigan (president of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research) and Rebecca Hinds (head of the Work AI Institute at Glean Technologies, will hold a congressional briefing to sharing findings with lawmakers.
Related Resource: Policy Brief
The brief, "Disruption to Opportunity: Policy Pathways to Strengthen Labor in the Age of AI," provides actionable recommendations drawn from the recent report.
Originally published by at keough.nd.edu on September 11, 2025.