The Department of Labor is releasing an artificial intelligence literacy framework to help Americans navigate a new technology that critics worry could be the death of the labor force and proponents argue could help employees become more productive. Analysts maintain the technology has drawbacks but significant potential upsides.
The framework focuses on education and contains five basic platforms, including:
- The importance of understanding AI’s capabilities
- Exploring how LLM features work
- Knowing how to use them effectively
- Reviewing whether the technology is producing accurate results
- Ensuring there is accountability for outcomes
Getting the details correct is important for workers, employers, politicians, and Americans, as polls show significant anxiety around whether AI’s ultimate aim is to replace the workforce.
More than half of Americans say AI will do more harm than good in their day-to-day lives, an 11% increase since last April, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. There’s a similar level of concern about the massive data centers that are powering this industry, the same poll shows.
Fears about the technological unknown are making their way into political campaign ads ahead of this year’s midterm elections. How big tech companies are justifying a cavalcade of major layoffs so far this year is likely adding to those concerns.
Meta, Amazon, and Pinterest, among others, have announced plans this year to reduce their workforce, citing AI for the need to get smaller. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid off about 700 employees late last month, and Block boss Jack Dorsey did the same to 4,000 employees.
FILE – This aerial photo shows an entrance to the Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex in Abilene, Texas on Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien, File)
“I think that 2026 is going to be the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work,” Zuckerberg said in January, adding more consternation about employee displacement as the industry tethers itself to the budding technology. Both executives cited AI advancements for the cuts.
Plans for more layoffs appear to be on the horizon, according to global outplacement job firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Employers announced 60,620 cuts in March, most of which targeted the tech sector, Challenger said.
Even so, the report indicates market and economic conditions, rather than AI, are the leading factors most cited. As tariffs take hold and the war on Iran threatens to drive up inflation and gas prices, investors are looking for good deals amid extreme economic volatility.
Part of the reason is the technology’s capability; another could simply be a focus on placating shareholder concerns about the costs associated with data center buildout. Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft are reportedly investing $650 billion into AI this year, BBC reported in March.
“It shows some discipline,” Anne Hoecker, a partner at Bain who leads the consultancy’s technology practice, says of the recent job cuts, told the BBC. “Maybe laying off people isn’t going to make much of a dent in that bill, but by creating a little bit of cashflow, it helps.”
Federico DeMarco works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
In this environment, the focus for Americans entering the job market should be on becoming familiar with how to use these new tools, executives argue.
“Students need to know when to rely on AI, when to challenge it, and how to add distinctly human insight to machine-generated output,” Dr. Evan Kropp, Executive Director of Distance Education at the University of Florida, told Forbes Magazine in February.
Technologists have been making Kropp’s point for months.
Journalist and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow warned last September of what he called the centaur and reverse centaur predicament for businesses and employees — that’s a reference in Greek mythology to a creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse.
The thrust of Doctorow’s argument entails a human becoming a type of tool for the AI app — or a reverse centaur — rather than a human with horse’s legs. In a post last year in Locust Magazine, Doctorow described the situation happening to freelance journalist Marco Buscaglia, who reportedly relied on an LLM to publish a best of reading summer list.
Of the 15 books on Buscaglia’s list, ten did not exist. They were made-up books the AI app hallucinated.
“A reverse-centaur is a machine that is assisted by a human being, who is expected to work at the machine’s pace,” Doctorow wrote, referring to the story. Buscaglia was pressed into doing “the work of 50 or more people, on a short timescale, and a shoestring budget.”
For his part, Doctorow has given examples where AI can be a tool for workers to do better work, including his work with Whisper, an LLM app that can help writers or journalists transcribe large volumes of media content. It counts down on research time, he argued in Locust.
“When I used Whisper to transcribe a folder full of MP3s, that was me being a centaur,” he added.