Technology In The Face Of Workers And Civil Rights

it is my honor to introduce the technology in the face of worker and civil rights panel I know you were waiting for this one today because you know that already big corporations and government organizations are utilizing AI technology as the dominant part of their workflow and the flaws the biases the inaccuracies in this technology are per perating stereotypes while also cre creating barriers between certain individuals and access to the public and the financial resources and employment opportunities the implications of AI technology are being felt right now and in the decades to come this technology is going to affect all aspects of human life so what a better moderator for this discussion than the AFL CIO Chief of Staff Julie Collier Julie began her career in the labor movement at the aflci o more than 20 years ago and she is a longtime political strategist who brings deep knowledge and understanding not just of the labor movement but government relations and political campaigns the union movement is expanding its Outreach in new communities Industries and regions and centering unrepresented groups in the building of a fairer economy it is a great honor and privilege to welcome Julie and I'm going to hand the mic on over to [Music] you testing okay thank you Rebecca I am so excited to moderate this panel this afternoon with what I would consider three history makers uh in our movement and I'm going to ask uh Maya and Fred please join me on the stage uh because I want to give due diligence in uh giving their bios so you know just how qualified they are to talk on all of these issues and and I want to say hello to Lorena who is joining us via Zoom you all should see her flanking the uh the uh screens on either side of the page um Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher is a former state legislator attorney Community organizer and activist and she is the first woman and first person of color to serve as chief officer of the California labor Federation of the AFL CIO please yes let's clap for that uh she served in the California State Assembly from 2013 to 2022 uh during her tenure she successfully sponsored and passed multiple pieces of legislation in California aimed at increasing Health Care access and putting more protections in place for workers she passed historic legislation allowing every single Californian the ability to earn paid sickly she authored leg legislation making California the first state in the nation to require Farm Workers to be paid overtime when they work an 8 hour day she helped raise the minimum wage in California which increased by $1 each year until the full implementation of $15 in 2022 and she's introduced and passed important legislation around employee misclassification and wage theft as it relates to this conversation Lorena has really been out front when it comes to the state level uh on the impact of AI on workers and she's played an instrumental role uh in the fight around autonomous vehicles which I'm sure we'll hear about uh in just a few minutes to my right Maya Wy is a nationally respected civil rights attorney activist leader academic legal analyst and commentator for NBC and MSNBC news on social civil and economic Justice she has dedicated her life to fights for equality and fairness she's the real deal her accolades and expertise prede her um from the very real impact she's had on racial justice issues race and poverty as it relates to education the digital divide land use planning and the green economy just to name a few she is currently the president and CEO of the leadership conference on civil and human rights which is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights Coalition with a diverse membership of more than 240 National organizations working to build an America as good as its ideals it's a coalition Coalition that's dedicated to democracy uh and lcr's work is nonpartisan um from the right to vote uh and the recently announced established of the first of its kind Center for civil rights and technology which I'm sure we'll hear more about uh this is going to expand and deepen our long-standing work on media and technology and it'll actively work with our Coalition Advocates academics policy makers and the policy makers uh in the private sector when it comes to positive possibilities around artificial intelligence and our last uh panelist participant Fred Redmond our secretary treasur of the AFL CIO who just two years ago it's hard to imagine that was just two years ago made history along with Liz Schuler um as being elected the highest ranking African-American officer in the history of the labor movement yes there is nowhere Fred goes where he doesn't lead uh he is the conscious of our labor movement he is a master bargainer strategizer and civil rights activists he connects the dots for our labor movement when it comes to our very close and at times times complicated but always strong relationship with the Civil Rights Movement Fred has a long history in our movement which started in 1973 when he went to work at Reynolds medals uh company in Chicago which is where he first joined the United Steel Workers he quickly Rose through the ranks um to being a national vice president uh before being elected to secretary treasurer's office at the AFL CIO he has spent his entire life fighting for racial Justice in the workplace and throughout our communities and he currently chairs the AFL cio's task force on racial Justice which is a body focused on taking concrete action to address America's long history on racism and police violence against all people of color he has served as chair of the board of directors of the A Philip Randolph Institute the Coalition of black trade unionists the trans Africa forum and in 2021 was elected president of the Trade union conf Federation of the Americas a prestigious International Post but to know Fred is to know that his most cetted titles are that of husband father grandfather and friend so with that um let's get right into it uh this morning many of us spent the morning at the convention center going through the consumer electronic show uh this is my first time being here this is an experience quite frankly I'm still processing uh I was off inspired I it was exciting but I also left with a lot of anxiety and fear and Fred you and I talked briefly uh after we did the tour and it seemed that every exhibit that we went by the top talking point was about capacity how it used to take 10 workers to do this function that AI is now you know only going to require one worker to do and I think the scariest part for me was going through the healthc care section and going to the uh healthy selfie Booth where you take a selfie and based on uh facial recognition software probably other Technologies it'll give you a diagnosis just based on your picture and then I think about other AI technologies that companies like Google and Amazon are using in their hiring where during virtual interviews AI is a ing intonation how you speak how you smile to determine your employability and Fred when I put all of this together and again like I said I'm still processing it I think it's important that we start to really think about in a real way what role do our unions play Not only in this technology and those are just a couple examples in our workplace but also just within the Civil Rights space well thank you very much Julie and first of all I want to say how privileged I am to be sharing this stage with two Dynamite sisters and Lorina and and Maya and I look forward to this discussion let me just say this we've had a lot of discussion this morning about the importance of collective bargaining over issues of AI and how it's going to affect workers throughout this country and I'm reminded Maya back in 1964 with the passage of title 7 of the Civil Rights Act organized labor began a process of negotiating civil rights language into our collective bargaining agreements because we wanted to make sure that the employers that we work for okay uh first of all abided by title seven of the Civil Rights Act which was to prevent racial discrimination and hiring practices on the job and I think that what we need to do in the labor movement as we approach AI in the workplace is doing those same discussions that we have over protecting our membership our seniority rights and other rights that we have on the job when we talk about AI we also got to revisit our civil rights languages on our collective bargaining agreement and make sure that AI which has the capacity which has the capacity of really really setting us back when it comes to hiring practices when it comes to issues of job promotions if we are not examining the the impact that AI could have on uh you know those those in the workforce who already have protections under title 7even I'm talking about women I'm talking about people of color I'm talking about handicapped and we have to be as aggressive uh on the issue of our civil rights language as we are in terms of uh protecting our collective bargaining rights as we approach this subject look we have a dual responsibility though we have a responsibility in the work place and we also have a responsibility outside of the workplace because what we have seen over the last couple of years through our great organizing victories is make no doubt about it the future of the labor movement happen to be brown black Asian female and young and we have a responsibility to protect our members outside of the workplace when it comes to issues of AI you know look when we look at the information that's going to be incorporated has the capacity to be incorporated in these algorithms okay then we have to make sure that the biases against women people with disabilities people of color that the biases that we have already experiencing in society do not go into the framing of the algorithms okay we we have to we have to be very very intentional and the labor movement have to be at the table which we deal with social justice policy as pertains to I to AI I don't know you could call it a blueprint on AI a Bill of Rights but we have to understand that we already are living in a society with many racial disparities we have racial disparities in Health Care and housing and incarceration rates and public education and we cannot sit idly by without being at the table in the discussions with our Community Partners and allies like the leadership con conference on civil rights the NAACP and other social justice groups we have historical relationships with okay to make sure that AI is not impacting on the serve communities throughout this country in a negative fashion so I think that's the responsibility that organized labor have not just in the workplace but also working and utilizing our constituency groups also to work within our communities to make sure that the impact is not negative thank you for that Fred and Lorena let me yeah please clap for that that was great I want to bring you into this conversation Lorena because you've said quot quote the only way workers have a meaningful voice about artificial intelligence in the workplace is if they have a union and can collectively bargain on how this technology is utilized and in particular this technology is here we're seeing it already being utilized um at the government level particularly in state governments and let's be honest it was pretty much born in your state of California so I wanted to bring you into the conversation to give us your take on it yeah I think that's right you know we have already seen the effects and we've also seen in California unions start to bargain around it of course dag after and The Writers Guild being some of the first unions to take this on at the table and in a meaningful way but even prior to that we've seen um at least in our state legislature an attempt to get at the fact that when we talk about civil rights we know the ultimate civil rights issue is a jobs issue you said it yourself if we can replace 10 workers with one uh worker because of AI that is an overarching civil rights issue what type of workers do you think are being replaced and we need to have that discussion here at the cowp point labor Federation AFL CIO we say we're technology neutral we're not suggesting that a technology is good or bad however when worker voices are centered and we can collectively bargain around the use of technology and AI in the workplace then we ensure that technology can actually be good AI should make us safer let's talk in particular about uh driverless trucks that's something that's hit California something we've been trying to legislate on um and something that is interesting when we talk about how technology has changed um worker rights basically in California so we uh had imposed on us in California by uh Uber andyt and and gig companies a a two-tier status where drivers um delivery drivers and ride Shar drivers don't have the same rights as other workers now coincidentally or maybe not a majority a vast majority of those drivers are black and brown and immigrant so you suddenly have this two-tiered system where those workers don't have the same rights to minimum wage and overtime they don't have the same rights to Social Security and and to some of our protections that we fought for employee status they don't have the right to organize and then on top of that you now have the introduction of driverless vehicles whose jobs are being replaced those same drivers that we've already taken many of the rights away from so we said well let's take on driverless big rigs right nobody thinks it's a good idea to allow a two-ton vehicle on our highways without a human operator we have a very simple proposal to ensure that a truck driver or a bus driver stays in the vehicle with the technology our hope is that the technology along with a human operator can create the best situation for safety and for jobs possible but what companies are trying to do is totally eliminate workers and that is an ultimate civil rights issue absolutely um we are in 2024 I don't have to tell everyone in this room what happens in November of this year a major election and uh We've touched on H Senator Schumer's Insight forums that he's been having and Maya I know you recently p uh testified excuse me this past September on the hill about Ai and the future of our elections and the threats of disinformation on our democracy and during your testimony you gave a lot of examples uh of what those threats are but you also gave some proposed Solutions or things we need to start working on I was hoping you could talk a little bit um just about our election system and the threat of this disinformation and the role that AI plays in it because it's not just about the jobs it's about you know our future quite frankly and there is a lot writing on our future whether you're a worker whether you have a union or not uh this year politically well first of all let me just say it is my great pleasure to be here um not just because I'm with wonderful labor leaders but because say the leadership conference on civil and human rights founded in 1950 was founded by a Philip Randol along with the NAACP uh and Jewish allies uh but I say that because labor rights are civil rights and we can't forget that so everything we've been talking about is civil rights whether we say civil rights or not uh and then that does bring us back to democracy because it there's so many things I could say about this but let me just talk about our elections when we have ai what it does and I I absolutely agree with lorine about it's technology neutral meaning technology is a tool it can do harm it can do good depends on how it's designed who's designing it and how they're using it what they want to do with it so what do you have in an unregulated system your labor what happens when there's no regulation around labor people get abused so when we talk about democracy when we talk about elections and then we say a on elections let's back up let's go back to uh I don't know January 6 comes to mind rooted in election denial rooted in intentional disinformation sometimes driven by Foreign governments so but as we know according to our own government even the FBI under a trump administration of Point e said it is actually white supremacists who pose the greatest threat to our democracy that's homegrown but part of that was the lies about about who was violating election laws and whether or not we had a legitimate election or not that by the way was highly racially coded remember not just because of Ruby Freeman and sheay Moss whose names now need to be indelibly written in the history of civil rights activists as public servants as workers who were simply trying to make sure everybody could vote but what was translated and for those of y'all from our chief of staff is from Atlanta Georgia you might remember that there was a video dropboxes right folks folks um with ballots at dropboxes went viral and in Arizona a politician called for folks because of this viral video that suggested a law violation by the way that was just lawful conduct but it got lied about called unlawful the next thing we know there people with rifles called out Vigilantes by an elected official and told to guard the ballot boxes these were I'm going to say it these were white people with guns making people afraid to go drop off their ballots because of a lie now that video was a real video the lie was about what was happening in the video but what artificial intelligence does is it puts in every single person's hand the ability to create what we call a deep fake which is you can make it look like a crime is being committed you can make it look like anybody any one of us is committing it and then you can put it out in public now one of the things that that means is we are bracing for and expecting artificial intelligence to vastly expand a problem we have already been seeing expanding in the United States which is hate and bias social media companies policies what gets posted by the way this is not a free speech issue anybody tells you we're anti-free speech that too is disinformation no no if it's a private company with user engagement rules to create a community you're allowed to say y'all can't do that hate up in here y'all can't no you can't come in here and talk about the nword no you can't come in here and spread lies about what's happening and who shouldn't be able to vote and who's stealing votes if it's untrue no you shouldn't be able to lie about vaccines and whe right all of those well guess what the social media companies are doing right now they are saying election denial claims from the 2020 election are now okay to post 49 lawsuits lost because there was no evidence it was stolen but all of this I'm just saying this because now we're seeing political campaigns and parties using artificial intelligence to make it sound like someone is saying something they're not saying or didn't say but we're also seeing that what the social media company is saying is okay just label it that that labeling is only if the person who or company or party or politi who's posting it says I'm going to say I used artificial intelligence to create this uhhuh yeah I thought it was funny too until I realized oh wait this is my democracy and they're serious now I'm only saying this because the primary problem here is that are not using the RW which is regulation regulation regulation why would we ever say it is okay and permissible for any politician or party to use any kind of deep fake in an election to ask for our votes I mean that's a real question why can't they just use actual footage by the way the other thing we have to know about this is and it's really important because the labor movement has such an important role to play is educating our folks on this because you know one of the things that art you can do is it's not just visual it's not just video it's audio so think about this I'm on MSNBC my voice anybody can go on YouTube and get clips of my voice and then they can use that audio with the technology artificial intelligence we have available today to use my voice make it sound like it's me make it sound like I'm saying things I never said and then use it to contact anybody they believe I could motivate by making it sound like I'm saying things I never said like text your vote to yeah I'm I'm like he's coming home with me so cuz you got work to do no if you're right there seriously though think about that so if we're not educating folks you someone on your family calls you and tells you to do something about voting call your family member back and make sure it was them but that's how Insidious this is and we know that there are is a tremendous number of people out in this country who have no qualms about stealing an election none so Maya there's when it's deliberate and Insidious and we're in control of it and then there's when AI just gets it wrong and there are some pretty prominent examples with high consequences of when AI has just gotten it wrong um in Michigan the unemployment office wrongly flagged 40,000 people um as having taken advantage of their unemployment benefits and so they went after those 40,000 people with fines uh which led to bankruptcies and and other Financial consequences uh in the state of Michigan Porsche Woodruff which is a story I know um you all know very well uh African-American 8-month pregnant woman uh was accused of robbery and carjacking and was identified by facial recognition technology uh in prisoned put in jail went into contractions in jail got out on a $100,000 bond only to find out that the facial recognition software got it wrong because facial recognition software is a little challenge with identifying people of color and so when you think about things like uh using facial recognition software to analyze interviews right and people have accents people have disabilities Fred as you mentioned um Lorena when you were talking about autonomous drivers and the thought of a two-ton truck being unmanned in the danger that that compos there are so many scary things what do we do so I would like each of you to give us you know an example of something we can do Maya you kind of started it with the education piece uh Lorena what are your thoughts here well I you know again I I hate to bring it back to just organizing in your workplace but it's such an essential portion of taking this on what we're dealing with in California is the introduction of AI in the healthc care industry and when you think about scary uh things that can go wrong we have a situation where a computer can decide what is wrong with a patient and the nurse has a hard time overruling that despite what she is seeing or he is seeing right in front of their own eyes we already know that people of color and in particular black women face um some challenges when it comes to the Health Care industry we don't even have the right to know who is deciding how to uh code these AI machines if you will who's making those decisions we require nurses and nurse practitioners and doctors to take a test to to ensure that they know what is happening we don't even know what the standard is on computers making a decision however if we can organize in workplaces demand that that technology is a mandatory subject of bargaining then we're at least in a better spot to be able to protect in healthc care its patients in in schools it's its students whatever it is um to be able to have that worker centered voice where we can override what are going to be natural prejudices and biases that that enter into the ai ai stream that's a a beginning um a way we can start to tackle this but I gotta say after hearing Maya's warning I'm you know I'm gonna I I wasn't planning to talk about elections I wasn't planning to discuss AI in elections with our members here but clearly this has to be an essential part as well because um just faking people out is is a really scary thought D Fred well couple of things that I think we as a labor movement should focus on first of all as far as Ai and the workplace is concerned we as labor movement have to continue our fight for labor law reform and we need to ensure that going into the future issues of artificial intelligence are mandatory subjects of bargaining and we have to insist upon that and we have to make that our fight as we talk about passing the proa and other labor law reform issues number one and then you know the second part about it is we have to understand who are the victims of AR or the potential victims you know when we look in the workplaces then we see the people who are more advanced in this stuff artificial intelligence are the companies that has workers that are more vulnerable such as the hospitality industry you know people go to work every day the only thing they want to do is shareing the wealth that they help to create but these are the in these are Industries like Hospitality Health Care you know people who care for are sick and you know wipe the sweat off the brow folks who was dying during Co you know but these are the industries that's really really divulging and investing a lot of resources to move this issue of artificial intelligence and these are the workers who are most vulnerable so we have to realize the vulnerability of uh the workers that's could really be affected by AI if it's not handled properly and then when we look into our communities you know as we said you know it's you know the algorithms is information in information you put in is the information you get out on the other hand and as long as we accept as a society a criminal profile okay that reflects black and brown men in this country okay then that's the result that's going to come out on that end when we start using algorithms and AI in terms of developing criminal profiles then we look at who has been harmed more in society when it comes to the issue of fair housing in this country and we have to look at these profiles that these algorithms have to potential to project that will only exacerbate uh the situation so you know as a labor moment we just can't afford to sit on the sidelines you know we have to look at this as a threat not only to our work place but also to our society and to our members and their communities and then um you know the overall community of people okay who are more prone to be workers are more prone to identify with our issues and the things that we believe in in the labor movement so we have to take a holistic approach we have to be at all tables as a labor movement because there are so many workers that's vulnerable inside the workplace and outside okay building on these uh really important points um does the labor movement do best organize organize organize and what do we have to organize about right now everything but let me just say that I know okay you're like okay I'm tired already Maya um look we're in a paradigm shift moment in this country and on this globe there are three major components to this Paradigm Shift climate change demographic change by which we mean Fred said it earlier who's becoming not just becoming I mean there's already been a majority of the world was already folks not white um but this country has been changing which is exactly why we are seeing the attack on our rights the attack on labor and organizing the attack on voting the attack on just doing diversity Equity inclusion things that we started to be able to take not for granted but at least that we had the same moral compass as a country in terms of what our American ideals were and what was not appropriate or okay to do that's gone y'all and now we've got technology changed that's the third it's changing every single thing and let me share one example with you from a 2018 2018 survey of experts on the development of AI and this survey which was in the Journal of artificial intelligence research found that AI experts believe that there was at least a 50% chance that within 45 years machine intelligence systems would outperform humans on everything everything you know what that means no jobs no jobs and what we've actually seen is an ex now look even the world economic Forum even the world economic Forum has said we are going to lose 85 million jobs 85 million jobs in a matter of a few years and some new jobs will be created but not enough and black folks 10% more likely to be losing jobs right now due to what's called I call Double Trouble they call Double disruption I don't know what we're disrupting disrupting a paycheck is not just disruption um but it's Robotics and AI coming together but the only reason I say that is because it's a choice it's a choice to just say it's inevitable there's nothing inevitable about what artificial intelligence should be allowed to do or not do that's a policy choice so we have the ability to organize right now to say and actually there's a lot there are actually experts in data scientists that agree with this that says no we should actually make policy decisions to say you can't use AI for every damn thing you just can't like you can't use it as a political party or politician a lie about what somebody said you can't you just can't you just can't well guess what and you can't just take away every single goddamn job in the planet you just can't everything can't become a not job but the other thing and this is going back to Lina's point I am I right I don't know what the rest I mean so but the and the other thing is going back to Len's point about healthc care because one of the examples the industry uses all the time because it is it is neutral unless you're just in a race for money and then it ain't neutral it's about where you can make the most money no matter who is harmed no matter what job is taken away so here's the thing 200 million people their data was in a system their healthc care data because that created an algorithm that was going to tell people who was most likely to need Hospital services and guess what it showed you know who needed hospitals say guess who needed Hospital Services more than anybody else white people with money you know why that 200 million people are the folks who could get Hospital Services okay okay so if you don't have health care if you're in a job and you don't have health care insurance you're not getting Hospital services and you're probably if you're on Medicaid you might be getting patient dumped which is one of the civil rights back as back way back in my day I was doing access to healthcare and dealing with patient dumping which was usually black and brown people getting dumped I'm only saying this because who says you can use something that's never been tested and proven to be safe before it's utilized as a friend of mine Damon hwit said who runs the lawyers committee for civil rights under law doing incredibly important work in this area he said toaster get more scrutiny than artificial intelligence do right now before they're on the market and it's true so all I'm saying is and I know I'm I'll shut up now but Amanda say I'm never asking her to speak again but I'm telling you we have to as a community start to say no you don't regulation everybody agrees with regulation nobody's defining it I Define it as you can't take all our jobs you can't tell us you can use something that ain't safe and you can't take our democracy because you choose to make money any old way you want so I think we're technically at time but I'm going to take uh moderator's privilege of taking another two minutes because we talked about some heavy things and some some of it was a little scary so I want to try and end on a little more of a positive note and just ask each of you what makes you hopeful about AI in this space I'll go ahead and start if that's okay please um I will say in this past year I've been so hopeful by young people I can't even stand it when we look at new organizing when we look at fighting back when we look at people standing up it has been young people and primarily young people of color in this country who are said enough is enough they're not going to uh take what has been spoonfed to them they're going to organize they're going to demand more and that makes me hopeful thank you [Applause] awesome what makes me hopeful is I look at this as a issue that has historically there's been certain issues in our history that has galvanized the Civil Rights Movement and the labor movement and I look at this issue as one of those moments in history where both of the of of these movements come together the two movements who Dr King said is the most effective movement on the planet when it comes to Social and economic Justice and I think this is an issue that galvanizes these two movements to come together to do a critical analysis to fight together and understanding that the impact that this issue of artificial intelligence can have on our society as a whole particularly those of the most vulnerable in our society sag Afra gives me hope Unite Here gives me hope everybody in the AFL gives me hope but because look a United Auto Workers gives me hope organizing gives me hope because everything we've ever done right in this country came from organizing everything and we have people on our side because most Americans are terrified they just don't know yet that we they have a choice they just don't know yet but that's what organizing tells them and I agree this generation coming up behind us is on fire it's on fire and part of the reason folks are rigging things and stealing things and trying to take things and lying about things is because they can't win unless they do but the all that showing us is we got so much power they're terrified they are terrified so all of you give me hope the AFL the fact that now we've got the Institute and look we're rolling deep and hard now and every last technology company has said out last L we agree there has to be regulation that is a huge opportunity for organizing because we can back them into the corner about what that regulation means how it's defined and who benefits from it awesome thank you to this panel thank you all so much for your expertise Lorena thank you for participating even remotely and more to come thanks so everyone

2024-02-19 15:13

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