“Building an AI-Ready America: How AI Is Creating Opportunities Across America's Workforce”
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House Education and Workforce U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsRick Allen
Other nations are investing aggressively in AI and this technology is evolving at an incredible pace. If the United States intends to win the AI race, we must invest in the infrastructure, workforce, and innovation needed to maintain our competitive edge. We also need better data on how AI is impacting our workforce so policymakers can make informed decisions. And we must think carefully before we impose unnecessary regulations that could stifle innovation or undermine American competitiveness. Today's hearing is an opportunity to explore how AI can strengthen our economy, create jobs, and reinforce America's leadership in innovation.
We appreciate the insights of our witnesses who will offer about how AI can improve people's lives and ensure this technology remains a tool that serves all Americans and not the other way around. With that, I yield to Representative McBath for an opening statement.
Lucy McBath
Thank you so much, Chairman Allen, and thank you everyone for joining us today. It's so nice to be down on this side of Georgia since I usually am up on the other end of Georgia, so I feel very welcome to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this important issue that is affecting our community with our community. Right now, Americans are being pushed to the brink by an economy that works for those only that are already doing well, but not for regular people. You shouldn't have to already have money to make money in the United States of America.
We cannot allow that to become the norm for an economy that prides itself on the idea of the American dream and opportunity for all. Despite working harder and producing more than ever before, American families cannot afford necessities like groceries, gas, and healthcare. If we want to make life easier for working people and their families, we must build a future that empowers them to protect themselves against these rising prices. Artificial intelligence, or AI as we know it by, will be a part of that future, as my colleague Representative Allen has stated, but we must act with caution and responsibility to ensure that these new technologies are working for regular people, working for all people, not making it more difficult for them to get good jobs and to keep those jobs. AI has rapidly been introduced in our lives.
While some uses of this technology in the workplace is absolutely without a doubt going to benefit people, it also can pose significant concerns. Some employers have used AI as a weapon in retaliation against workers who are unionizing or to lower wages. The unrestricted use of AI can also infringe on workers' privacy and make it harder for workers to prove that their gender, their race, their age, or disability status were used to discriminate against them, which despite all of the progress that we've made in this country, unfortunately still this happens every single day. As AI becomes more common, and yes it will, we've begun to see some employers use sophisticated technology to actually monitor and evaluate their workers. This includes tracing workers' on-the-job physical activity such as bathroom breaks, using facial recognition to assess their attention to computer screens and other tasks.
That is a level of surveillance and control that members of Congress would never accept for ourselves, and we shouldn't expect that of the American people.
Congress must also not ignore the very real concerns that families across our country and in Georgia have about the expansion of data centers. Ansley Brown and her family in Coweta County were one of the many that were forced to sell their family home, which will be demolished to make way for a power line to feed AI data centers. As AI continues to grow at a rapid pace, we have a responsibility to ensure that innovation — yes, we need the innovation — but we have a responsibility to make sure that it does not come at the expense of the people that it's meant to serve. The future of AI is definitely promising, but it must also be guided by the fairness, respect for people's homes, and a commitment to protecting families in Georgia and the communities they have built and lived in for generations. It is critical that the implementation of AI be a community-led effort.
This begins by ensuring that workers and their unions have a seat at the table in the development and implementation of AI in America's workplaces. And it is the role of our local, state, and federal governments to implement safeguards to prevent employer abuse, protect people's homes, and address privacy concerns. Congress has the responsibility to rein in big tech companies so that AI can be used for Americans instead of being used against them. Many cities and states have put sensible guardrails in place to protect people and to ensure that AI is being used and expanded appropriately. It is concerning that several of my colleagues recently attempted to pass a moratorium on state and local AI regulations in the one big beautiful bill, a move that generated so much bipartisan opposition that 17 Republican governors, including the governor of Georgia, Governor Kemp, wrote to the United States Senate in opposition, warning that people will be at risk until basic rules, just basic rules ensuring safety and fairness can be put into effect.
We don't need another tool that will funnel profits to the top at the expense of the regular Americans doing the work to create those profits. We don't need another reason for large companies and governments to use eminent domain to force Georgians like Ansley Brown into abandoning their childhood homes. What the American people do need is for Congress to take an active role in shaping how AI is integrated into our daily lives and in developing thoughtful regulations that balance protecting people with the need for economic growth. I hope that today's discussion will definitely be a bipartisan path forward to ensure that Congress, that my colleagues and I, strike the appropriate balance on artificial intelligence, and I yield.
Rick Allen
The gentlelady yields. Pursuant to committee rule 8C, all members who wish to insert written statements into the record may do so by submitting them to the committee clerk electronically in Microsoft Word format by 5:00 PM 14 days after this hearing. And without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements and other extraneous material noted during the hearing to be submitted for the official hearing record. I will now turn to the introduction of our distinguished four witnesses. Our first witness is Mr. Parayil, founder and CEO of Manus Bio in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mr. Parayil, thank you for being here. Our second witness is Mr. Brad Edenfield, a farmer and general manager of RT Farms in Burke County, Georgia. Our third witness is Mr. Tony Barlow, vice president at Communication Workers of America, local 3204 in Atlanta, Georgia. Our last witness is Dr. Jeffrey Talbert, professor and department chair in AI and health in Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University here in Augusta, Georgia. We thank the witnesses for being here today.
Pursuant to committee rules, I would ask that each that you each limit your oral presentation to a five-minute summary of your written statement. You see the the timer right in front of you. Now, I will first recognize Mr. Parayil for your testimony.
Ajikumar Parayil
Good morning, Chairman Allen and members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. My name is Ajikumar Parayil. I'm the founder and chief executive officer of Manus, a next-generation industrial biotechnology company focused on the advanced biomanufacturing of complex natural products used in food ingredients, agricultural chemicals, and essential medicines. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing in Augusta, Georgia. As a proud naturalized US citizen, I chose to raise my family here in Augusta and build one of America's largest biomanufacturing facilities in Augusta.
I was raised in a farming family in India, where agriculture centered on spices, medicinal plants, and other crops valued for the natural compounds they use in our everyday life. My early experience working in agriculture fields, later studying organic chemistry, fostered a lasting interest in understanding how they are formed and how they might be produced more efficiently and economically. That experience led me to a fundamental question: could biology provide a better approach? Pursuing that question ultimately brought me to the United States. I'm grateful for the opportunity America gave me to come here and advance a frontier bioengineering technology at MIT with the support from a two-million-dollar NIH funding.
That work led to a powerful cell factory engineering and biomanufacturing platform technology for producing complex chemicals that are difficult to grow agriculturally or synthesize chemically. This became the foundation of Manus' technology platform, attracting hundreds of million dollars in investment, supporting factories in rural America, and creating jobs here at home. I founded Manus in 2011 with my colleagues from MIT. Over the past 15 years, we have developed and commercialized a biomanufacturing platform that helps address US critical supply chain vulnerabilities in food, medicines, and materials. By using domestic input such as US-grown corn sugar, Manus can replace foreign-sourced products from sweeteners to pharmaceutical starting materials and intermediates.
Manus acquired the Augusta biofacility in 2018 as part of our acquisition of NutraSweet company. The former NutraSweet facility for aspartame production had shuttered in 2014 due to competition from foreign manufacturers in China. Manus repurposed this facility for the production of bio-alternatives at a fraction of the cost of building a brand new facility, rehired many of the original operators and trained and expanded the team, bringing more than 150 skilled jobs back to rural Georgia and integrating them to the economy of the future. We have deliberately built out domestic manufacturing, having invested more than 100 million in Augusta, Georgia through 2025 and with an anticipated total investment of approximately 135 million by the end of 2026. Manus has commercialized multiple products out of our Augusta biofacility.
In addition to multiple flavors, our stevia sweetener, we recently announced the launch of monk fruit sweetener, the first monk fruit product that is completely decoupled to China and manufactured right here in the United States at commercial scale through industrial bio-manufacturing. In doing so, we are demonstrating the power of American investment into the next generation technology in enabling paradigm shift in the manufacturing of natural sweeteners and ingredients, paving a path for regaining American dominance in this sector. Aligning with the Make America Healthy Again movement, Manus sweeteners provide a natural solution for tackling sugar reduction and making healthier food more affordable and accessible. Additionally, Manus is partnering with the Department of Health and Human Services on reshoring US pharmaceutical production by leveraging bio-manufacturing and continuous flow chemistry to reduce dependency on unstable foreign supply chains like China and India, especially for critical medicine derived from fragile natural sources. Manus offers a scalable solution by leveraging US innovation and domestic bio-manufacturing to transform domestic feedstocks like US corn into KSM APIs, eliminating upstream checkpoints and stockpiling alone cannot fix.
Today's hearing is about ensuring the next generation of manufacturing is designed, built, and scaled in America, how artificial intelligence can be leveraged to create opportunities in American workforce. AI is rapidly becoming one of the defining technologies of 21st century. While much of the public conversation has focused on generative AI, some of the most significant opportunities lie in how AI is transforming the way we design, build, and manufacture products here at home. As global competition intensifies, the United States has an opportunity to lead not only in deploying AI technologies, but also in deploying them to strengthen our industrial base, create high-quality manufacturing jobs, drive long-term economic growth. This type of innovation has implications far beyond a single company or industry.
AI is giving manufacturers like Manus new tools to optimize production, improve quality, reduce waste, strengthen supply chains, bringing new product to market faster. These advancements also create opportunities for American workers, from software engineers, data scientists to skilled technicians, operators, and advanced manufacturing professionals supporting a stronger and more competitive domestic economy.
Rick Allen
I'm sorry, we're out of time, but you've submitted your full testimony for the record, so we all have that available to you. Next, I will recognize Mr. Edenfield for your testimony. You have five minutes, sir.
Brad Edenfield
Good morning, Chairman Allen and members of the Education and Workforce Committee. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences and opinions on how I believe artificial intelligence, AI, is and will continue to impact agriculture. As a fifth-generation farmer, I'm very passionate about both the future and the goals of agriculture. I believe that it is a key industry, not only for the state, but also the nation and for the success and survival of both those things.
As a farmer, I'm also acutely aware of the challenges that we face every day, and the importance of our ability to be able to adapt to overcome those challenges. Technology in general is disruptive, which can be uncomfortable and sometimes controversial. However, it is through those changes that we create new efficiencies and reach new goals that we didn't have the opportunity in the past. AI processes data at a rate that a human can't even fathom, but it takes an individual to be able to understand the interconnections and how to use that data to generate any type of real value. In agriculture, as within other industries, we're constantly looking for ways that we can do more with less.
We rely on our past experiences and the experiences of those who came before us to help guide us to do that. When using AI, it's up to the individual to be able to determine whether or not the information that it gives us is valid. As a farmer with decades of experience, I can usually take what it gives me and be able to determine that, but many a farmer with decades of experience don't have a desire or an ability to use AI to be able to do that, to use it properly. Conversely, the individual that has the experience and the desire to use AI typically doesn't have the background in either agriculture or whatever field to be able to use AI to really generate any value in that area or in that industry. In agriculture, the average age of the farmer is continuing to decline, and it has throughout my entire time in it, and I do see AI as an opportunity for us to be able to potentially entice younger people into, back into the fields.
I think it creates an opportunity in education for internships between individuals who want to develop more meaningful AI platforms to partner with people that have decades worth of experience in their field to be able to advance that industry. This could lead to both new two and four-year degree opportunities, I think. But then when we look at it from a job standpoint, I think it's going to be critical for us in agriculture to really evaluate AI and determine ways that we can make it be implemented in our unique operations, but more importantly, we're going to have to realize that we have to begin looking for a new type of employee, one that can bridge that gap between the historical type of work that we've always done and this intangible element that we may not have considered in the past. I do believe that new types of education and job opportunities could lead to a better understanding and even appreciation of our industry, which could lead to more people seeking employment within it. At this time, AI is currently used in our industry as a time-saving tool, but I do believe that with proper educational paths and adoption within the industry, both in implementation but also hiring, that it could be a paradigm shift, create a paradigm shift that would revolutionize our entire industry and allow us to do more with less.
I'd like to thank you again for this opportunity to be able to share my decades of experience in agriculture with you and how it impacts AI.
Rick Allen
The gentleman yields. Next I will call on Mr. Barlow, next I'll recognize Mr. Barlow for your testimony. Sir, you have five minutes.
Tony Barlow
Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Allen, Ranking Member Mr. Baff, and members of the committee.
Thank y'all for the opportunity to testify. My name is Tony Barlow. I'm the vice president of CWA Local 3204, and I'm an outside plant tech for AT&T in Atlanta. Workers across the country have seen employers racing to adopt new artificial intelligence tools. Without proper guardrails, AI has the potential to displace workers, degrade job quality, and undermine service quality.
It is crucial that workers have a voice in how this technology is used in the workplace. At the call centers in my local, AI are used to monitor, speed up work, take away the ability to respond to customer's needs, automate customer service functions to reduce head count, and create a stressful workplace environment. CWA call center workers nationwide reported that AI tools are designed to automate both front-line tasks like note-taking, management functions like scheduling, training, performance evaluations. In a 2023 survey, nearly 3,000 CWA call center members reported AI tools negatively impacted their job quality. Rather than improve their jobs, most workers felt AI sped up work, expanded monitoring, discipline linked to surveillance, increased workplace stress, lowered job satisfaction, and it did not improve customer services.
For example, AI tools will analyze calls in real time, providing instant feedback to managers on aspects of customer interactions. These tools claim to measure things such as tone of voice, speaking pace, and workers following to their call script. But they can be flawed, sometimes failing to track conversations properly or exhibiting bias in evaluating workers. I've heard from my members and other call center workers that these measurements can be biased against workers of colors or certain speech style such as a Southern accent. Telecom technicians working in the field and providing services at customers' homes and are similarly being monitored and kept in tight schedule through real-time tracking of their locations through GPS and increasingly are directed throughout their day by automatic routing tools.
It doesn't have to be this way. AI can empower workers, building their skills and improving their ability to perform the uniquely human part of their job, but only if workers have the voice in the development and implementation of AI systems. For instance, working in the call center as a customer service agents takes real skills. It's a talent to convince a frustrated customer to not only retain their services, but to buy another service. Agents has the talent and the ability to identify customer needs and find out solutions.
But AI can rob workers of their power to use their knowledge and skills to solve problems. The job becomes more sticking to a script. For years, our employers have been attempted to use technology to deskill our jobs and replace us with lower-paid non-union contractors. Only through collective bargaining we have protected our jobs and placed limits on outsourcing. There are immediate steps that Congress can take to make sure that AI is used properly.
Congress could pass the No Robot Boss Act, which prohibits employers from making hiring, firing, and disciplinary decisions on the basis of automated software without the input of a human. We're lucky to have a collective bargaining agreement that helps protect us, but workers have face, should not face threats to their livelihood on the basis of AI decisions that may be illegal, discriminatory, or simply incorrect. Congress should also pass the Keep the Call Centers in America Act. One key part of the bill, of this bill gives customers the right to be transferred to an actual person rather than talking to a AI agent. This would both improve customer services and ensure smoother processes for agents by decreasing customer's frustration.
As a father of three daughters and one son, all in college, I urge Congress to take the time to get these policies right. The policy enacted will affect not only my own children, but also working families across the country for years to come. These policies will determine whether families can secure a good job, support their families, build financial stability, and pursue fulfilling lives. Thank y'all for the opportunity to testify before you today. I look forward to any questions you may have.
Rick Allen
I thank the gentleman. The gentleman yields. Under committee rule... Oh. Sorry.
Getting ahead of myself. Saving the best for last. I recognize Dr. Talbert for your testimony. Thank you.
Jeffrey Talbert
Chairman Allen, Ranking Member McBath, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on how artificial intelligence is creating opportunities across America's healthcare workforce. My name is Jeffrey Talbert, professor and chair of the Department of Artificial Intelligence in Health at Augusta University's Medical College of Georgia, and a Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar with over 30 years of experience in biomedical informatics. The Medical College of Georgia is one of the largest medical schools in the country. We provide the next generation of physician leaders with a life-saving and life-changing education.
As a part of that education, we are teaching students how AI can be a force amplifier and contribute to better health outcomes for their patients. In healthcare, AI is increasingly demonstrating its greatest value is through augmentation. The strongest evidence shows AI helps healthcare professionals work more effectively, reduce administrative burdens, improve patient outcomes, and expand workforce capacity. The healthcare workforce faces staffing shortages, rising administrative demands, burnout, and retention challenges. More than 40% of physicians report symptoms of burnout, and many spend substantial portions of their day documenting care rather than providing it.
One of the healthcare industry's most successful AI applications is ambient document technology. This converts clinical conversations into draft notes that clinicians review and approve. Multiple studies show these tools reduce documentation burden, after-hours work, and burnout. One multi-system implementation of these tools found clinician burnout fell from approximately 52% to 39%. AI is also producing measurable improvements in healthcare quality and medical discovery.
For example, large studies of AI-assisted breast cancer screenings have shown approximately 29% higher cancer detection, helping more patients benefit from earlier diagnosis and treatment. AI is also demonstrating the potential to predict serious complications before they occur. Deep learning models have been shown to predict acute kidney injury up to 48 hours before traditional clinical recognition. FDA-cleared AI systems for diabetic retinopathy can identify patients at risk for preventable blindness in primary care settings, allowing interventions before disease progression. We are also beginning to see AI accelerate the development of new medicines.
One AI-discovered drug candidate to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis advanced to human clinical testing in 30 months, about half the time commonly required for traditional drug discovery programs.
This allows healthcare professionals to spend their time caring for patients, detecting, diagnosing, and treating disease earlier, and accelerating scientific discovery. By using AI to enhance care, we can create a healthier population and a stronger, more capable workforce. America's opportunity is not simply to adopt AI, but to lead its responsible development and education and implementation. That is why Augusta University established the Department of AI and Health at the Medical College of Georgia, the first department of its kind in Georgia, to advance AI research, support groundbreaking achievements in translational science, and support responsible implementation of AI in clinical practice. Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.
I look forward to your questions.
Rick Allen
Good, thank you, Dr. Talbert, and the gentleman yields. Now, under committee rule nine, we will now question witnesses under the five-minute rule. I'll recognize myself for five minutes. Mr. Porwal, your company has developed and commercialized a biomanufacturing platform that helps address US supply chain vulnerabilities in food, medicines, and other materials. In what ways does artificial intelligence make the work you do at Manus possible?
Ajikumar Parayil
Thank you for that question. There is a multi-pronged effect coming here from what our company does is we create cell factories which can consume US-produced corn and make these products at a commercial scale. So this is most advanced biotechnological processes. There, the design engineering of that cell, we call cell factory, is very critical. That is America invented and innovated in this technology last 25 years, right, with biotechnology.
So advancing that technology using AI, what Manus collected last 15 years of the data, using that data, we implemented AI for advanced design and engineering of that cell factories. Then the next is what is our biggest challenge is, can you produce at home at scale and economically? That's where what we are practicing in Augusta, bringing AI to help our team to implement that commercial scale operation of the technology.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Rick Allen
All right, Mr. Enfield, in your written testimony, discusses AI's potential to help tackle workforce challenges in farming and agriculture. What kinds of workforce opportunities are you already seeing in agriculture as a result of this technology?
Brad Edenfield
Yes, so agriculture in general, as I mentioned before, we have an aging workforce. In general, younger people typically don't like or have been attracted to the type of work that we do. In addition, the cost to enter our industry is usually very high, so that can create conflicts, ability to do that. I know that for farm, it's not a secret that in most cases, farm work families are generational. What we've seen though is a lot of times the younger generation not having that same desire to come back and work on the farm.
But personally, I know of a number of individuals who went into other industries and now after five to 10 years of doing something else, AI has created an opportunity for them to come back to their family's farm.
Speaker 12
And you mentioned that you think younger people will be drawn to agriculture as a result of this technology.
Yes.
Rick Allen
Good. Dr. Talbert, your written testimony talks about how AI workforce value in medicine and healthcare lies in augmenting the role of workers and not replacing them. Why is it important to increase workforce capacity in the medical field?
Jeffrey Talbert
I'm sure. AI creates better patient care by taking the administrative burdens off of the clinicians that are there. So what we're really trying to do is to try to reduce this burnout, make physicians more happy with their job, and all clinicians more happy with their job. We don't want them to leave and go take jobs elsewhere. So by using these AI administrative tools that can really make their jobs easier and more effective, we're hoping that it'll make them happier, they'll stay in their jobs longer, and we'll have more healthcare workers in our workforce.
Rick Allen
So how does this expand, increase, create demand for new roles in healthcare?
Jeffrey Talbert
So as AI is implemented, we're seeing that we need new types of workers. And we've talked about this, a couple of us on this panel today. So in healthcare, as you implement AI, you need new staff that can work on the implementation challenges, work on the regulatory challenges, work on how to train the current workers that are there to be able to use those tools. So we're having to hire a lot of new people just to manage the AI as it moves forward. So there's lots of new opportunities for current staff to get retrained to be able to support some of these tools, as well as to hire new staff to come in and help manage as AI's implemented across the healthcare industry.
Rick Allen
Okay, great. Thank you. All right, now I will go to Ms. McBath for your five minutes of questioning.
Lucy McBath
Thank you so much, Chairman. Thank you so much for each and every one of you. I've just been taking lots of copious notes because I really am interested in this, everything that you've said this morning. And Dr. Talbert, you know, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it.
And many Americans are familiar with AI, but they are less familiar with the use of it in healthcare. And so can you please discuss what your understanding is of AI competency in language in which most people can understand, you know, in fields like healthcare, and what that looks like? And you know, you've already kind of touched upon what this means for us in the future, but if you want to expand upon that, that would be great.
Jeffrey Talbert
A couple of distinctions I'll make to kind of respond to I think the keynote of your question, which is how competent is the AI that we're using in healthcare. And the first thing to note is that the FDA actually right now regulates about, I think they have 1,450 approved AI tools. Those have been around, the first ones were approved in the late 1990s. And so these are anytime you go and have an MRI, a CT scan, or an X-ray, the radiologist that reads that and the machine that actually does the scan, those machines actually use AI as part of that process and report advanced tools that are FDA-approved tools to those clinicians to help them understand that. The approval process for that goes through something very similar to medications.
So to get a medication approved, you know, it has to go through the clinical trial process and to be approved. So the AI tools go through the same process, or a very similar process, that those drugs go through. Now, different types of tools in AI, so let's say I create an AI tool to predict how many people are going to not show up for their clinic appointment today. Well, that's very useful in the clinic, but that doesn't require AI approval because it doesn't impact direct patient care. It's just an administrative tool.
So I can make that and market it and sell it as much as I want to. So then there's lots of those kind of AI tools that are using generative AI things to be used in the clinic. So the quality of those tools really depends on the quality of the company that developed it or the people that developed it and how it's used and implemented.
Speaker 13
...of new staff that can come in and help monitor these tools, make sure that the performance is adequate for what it what they think it's doing, and it's doing things correctly.
Lucy McBath
Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Mr. Barlow, often times headlines focus on the chances that technology will lead to workers being laid off, as you've just already kind of suggested can happen. But even when workers keep their jobs, the quality of those jobs can change with the arrival of these new technologies.
For example, technologies might make it easier for bosses to monitor employee activity, or workers might be forced to use frustrating and clunky computer programs that they don't understand, but they're using them, trying to learn how to use them in order to get their jobs done. Can you speak about why it's important for management to consult with workers? You've touched upon it just briefly, but if you would expound upon that just a little bit more. It's important, as you said, for management to consult with workers before adopting this new technology.
Tony Barlow
Yes, yes, thank you for that question. As you can see, we have experts in certain fields that's here, doctors for healthcare and and agriculture and so forth. But I do believe that workers are the experts that actually are doing their job day-to-day. Um, they know the technology, they know it's going to help them do their job and make it better, um, rather than making their lives a little harder. Workers have a clear understanding of what is needed as necessary to get the job done.
Um, they they know the day-to-day tasks, what is needed for that job. Um, so if workers are not consulted, AI tools can actually slow down the process of them doing their job, make their work a little less efficient, um, and it just doesn't affect workers, it also impact the customers and also the business in the process by slow slowing things down because it's not being implemented properly.
Speaker 14
Okay. Thank you. One more question for you too. We've heard about AI being used to evaluate workers' performance, and you've even kind of touched upon that. This is sometimes called algorithm algorithmic management.
Have members of your union experienced these kinds of programs being used to judge their work?
Tony Barlow
Yes, so as vice president of my local, um, I heard from call center members that AI do evaluate, um, but they don't always it it shouldn't work the way they should. Um, these tools are often don't recognize certain pronunciations as speech styles. Um, this can be a real problem here in Georgia, um, where many workers here have Southern accents. Um, like workers of color have said that AI, um, can be biased and discriminatory. Um, when AI can make a mistake, um, it can make a member's livelihood at risk, um, even though through discipline or losing extra pay.
Um, it'll create a little extra more stress at work, lower job satisfactory, um, and it just I just feel like it just it's a less job satisfactory for my members. The people are becoming unhappy and the work is is not being done properly.
Rick Allen
The gentlelady yields. Now it is my privilege to recognize my dear friend from across the river, in South Carolina, and I think probably the senior member on the Committee of Education Workforce, my dear friend Joe Wilson, for his five minutes of questioning.
Joe Wilson
And thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And indeed, ladies and gentlemen, I'm grateful to be here and neighbors of the counties that I represent, Aiken and Barnwell. Just I'm grateful to be here with you. And hey, I'm so happy to hear this is number one community because we adopt it too. I indeed, North Augusta, you can hey, all of this is inseparable.
And then I want you to know too that in the future in South Carolina, that both candidates for governor are going to be working together to be cooperative, State Representative Jermaine Johnson of Columbia and the Attorney General of South Carolina, Alan Wilson, my oldest son of Lexington. Both candidates for governor of South Carolina are going to be working together in bipartisanship to maintain the interstate cooperation.
Additionally, I'm grateful to be here with Chairman Rick Allen. I only regret Robin's not here, but we just so appreciate, again, it's an example of working together on the Savannah River site, on every issue known to man for Gordon and how exciting Cyber Command and then New Savannah Lock and Dam. Over and over again, it's bi-state cooperation. And then bipartisanship, Congresswoman Lucy McBath is a living example this week, she working with Congressman Burgess Owens of Utah and Chairman Mike, excuse me, Tim Walberg, some great legislation has been approved this week for the committee for the American people. So I'm grateful to be here with her.
And then it's meaningful to me to be here, my family heritage, my grandfather Wilson was born across the river, Beech Island, 1888, and great-grandfather Wilson, 1860. And then to be here with President Russell Kean, the heritage continues. We were both born in the Holy City of Charleston, South Carolina. So I'm grateful to be here with the President. With that in mind, Mr. Payel, we have a challenge from China in regard to AI and being more productive and innovative.
How can we indeed address this competition?
Ajikumar Parayil
I think how fast we can implement AI responsibly and how do we democratize AI is going to be critical to our manufacturing sector to improve the productivity of our workforce is the critical to competition, bringing competing to China. So let me maybe real-life example, right? If you go back to our warehouse, that is kind of a lower-level job in this manufacturing sector, right? The person who runs the warehouse, he normally manage all the incoming raw materials and everything. Traditionally, he need to scan it, wait, read lot of papers.
Now, Ellie could control an AI agent is a helpful to Ellie to manage it because you scan it, in a fraction of second, he know that one, the material coming in is high quality, good quality, you know, this one. So it's improving the productivity of people. And people will be happy. The AI is not managing Ellie, but Ellie is managing AI, right? So it's a reverse.
So how fast we can implement these advanced technologies to competition is China is going to be because China, we cannot compete on labor cost with China. Only way advanced technologies we can compete with China.
Joe Wilson
And indeed, to me it's exciting to see jobs being created by the new technology. And Mr. Edenfield, you've done great on agriculture and specific crops are of interest to me, peaches, pecans, cotton. How can AI address specific crops?
Brad Edenfield
Certainly. So in agriculture, we're clearly limited on a number of issues, but number one is acreage. Every year we're losing more and more acreage to different types of development. And so we can use AI to potentially try to find those opportunities for us to increase, I feel like two real ways, that's time and money, to find efficiencies. And so as a cotton farmer, you know, trying to determine the right types of, helping it help make decisions on trying to use exactly which varieties and timing of applications and things to be able to be more efficient, I think would be opportunities there.
Joe Wilson
Well again, it's exciting to see productivity and new jobs. And Dr. Talbert, indeed, on Fox and Friends this morning as I was coming here, they were going over how advances in AI are helping address cancer recovery. And so how would you present that?
Jeffrey Talbert
I think a lot of those tools around really increasing detection of disease earlier really comes from some of the AI tools around imaging. So a lot of the work that I talked about with breast cancer screening, they're able to look at the images and screen the images better and see things sooner than human beings can see. Same things with colon screenings and others. So it's really applying the best technology to those use cases to help physicians make better decisions.
Rick Allen
The gentleman yields. And again, I want to thank everyone for being here today. And I will now recognize Mrs. McBath for her closing remarks.
Lucy McBath
Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I do want to say I actually had a chance to go to one of our advanced manufacturing product manufacturers called Qcells just last week. And so we got a chance to see really a great expanded usage of AI and technology there. So I just wanted to put that plug in there as well. But thank you, Chairman.
Thank you once again to everyone for joining us today. Artificial intelligence does present many, many opportunities as you've heard, but we must ensure that we're not leaving anyone behind. To strike that balance, Americans must be central to the conversation about AI in the workplace rather than just having it imposed on them. While there are major benefits, AI can also pose great risks to worker security and privacy. Used and expanded properly, and I think that's what we're all looking, trying and trying to move forward to is using AI properly.
AI can't, you know, if we don't, it's going to degrade jobs for the people who are actually doing them, but it will increase invasive workplace surveillance practices and erode property rights for Georgians who have lived here for generations. We must also recognize that AI's impact, it extends beyond the workplace, and we've heard that this morning. Communities in Georgia hosting data centers are facing real strains on the water and energy usage, and some Georgians are even being forced out of their homes to make way for data centers and for power lines. Economic development should not come at the expense of public health or our environment, and certainly not people's homes. Technology itself is not the problem.
That's not the problem. The problem is deploying powerful tools without guardrails, without transparency or input from the people that will be impacted by it the most. When our government steps back, we don't get neutrality. We get rules written by and for those with the most wealth and power in our society. But it is our responsibility as lawmakers to make sure that we keep our hands on the pulse, to make sure that AI technology works efficiently and effectively for everyone.
AI should be a tool that works for all people, not one that only extracts value for those who don't live in our communities while leaving our friends and our neighbors to absorb the cost. Congress has a responsibility to act now and establish guardrails on AI use that balance protecting people along with the growth, economic growth that AI does pose. So I look forward to working with my colleagues to find real solutions that center on the needs of everyday American people. Thank you all for participating today. Thank you for being here.
And I yield the balance of my time.
Rick Allen
The gentlelady yields. I want to thank our witnesses today for sharing your perspective on how AI is creating all these economic and workforce opportunities. And as my dear friend Joe Wilson mentioned, this is a global challenge. We are the greatest economic power in the world. And I believe that's a mantle that's given to us by the grace of God.
And but yet, if we don't be obedient to that, I think God will give it to someone else, another nation. And can you imagine what the world would look like if we weren't trying to keep peace around the world right now?
And obviously AI is important. In fact, we mentioned the Cyber Center of Excellence and what's going on there. I'm telling you, let's give those guys a hand because they have played a major role in what we've been able to accomplish militarily and in keeping peace. I will tell you this, you know, we're privy to a lot of information in Congress. And, you know, we have a lot of classified briefings.
And our Secretary Rubio was asked a question by one of my colleagues about, you know, how do you feel about putting our military in harm's way like we did in Venezuela? And he said, well, he said, you know, the problem was the weather. We had to wait till the weather cleared. When the weather cleared, we knew what Maduro had for dinner and we knew exactly where he and his wife were sleeping. Now folks, that is the power that we have right here in Augusta, Georgia.
The power to know where our enemies are and how to deal with them in a very, very dangerous world. And AI is going to determine a lot of that success going forward. Not trying to scare anybody, but we are in a global situation here. And again, we have to do this responsibly and cooperatively. It's going to change the workplace.
And I'll tell you, I ran a business for 40 years and I had a young man that was very technical. And we were at the tip of the spear on technology in our company, which made us very competitive. But I'll tell you, I finally said, we're not spending any more money on technology in this company till we figure out how to use what we have because that's how fast it's moving. As discussed today, AI has a real potential to help us keep manufacturing in America. We are moving manufacturing back to America.
This is good news for our workforce. And in fact, you know, I've told every labor union, I've told every business, you know, we must train the future workforce for our country to build this manufacturing base. GDP growth is critical to reducing our deficit. And there's nothing holding us back other than the training, you know, the workforce creates GDP. And, you know, of course, Southern accent, I get a lot of comments on my accent, so I identify with you on that one.
But AI can help us train doctors to meet the needs of our healthcare system and help doctors spend more time with patients and less time charting. AI can help farmers to do more with less and lower the barriers to entry for Americans who want to work in farming and agriculture. And I'll tell you, our production per acre is off the charts. Nobody can touch us. Well, this has been an eye-opening event.
We're going to have other hearings across the country on this because in Congress, as Representative McBath says, we want to get this right. And the only way we get it right is listen to the American people. And so, Lucy, thank you for being here today and taking time to do this. And Joe, thank you for coming over. We got in very late last night.
So, in fact, for a while there, I was afraid we weren't going to be here. Speaker said on Tuesday, we're going to get this stuff done and we're going to be here until we get it done. And we got a lot done last week. And now we'll be in the districts now for the next month, so explaining to folks a lot about AI and some of the fears there. So, I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress and this administration to make the promise of AI and make sure it is fulfilled for all Americans, American workers and job creators.
I would like to again thank our witnesses for testifying before the committee today. And without objection, there being no further business, the committee stands adjourned.