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State Sen. Josh Becker hosted a town hall on Thursday evening focused on moving the AI conversation beyond questions such as “Will a robot take my job?” and toward its concrete impact.
“We know that AI is already beginning to reshape people’s lives and the nature of California’s economy,” Becker, D-Menlo Park, said during the virtual town hall. “It is up to us to make sure that AI is beneficial for society.”
Three panelists from Stanford and UCLA told virtual audience members about hiring trends and efforts to restructure the education system.
The research of Bharat Chandar – an economist at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab who spoke at the town hall – indicates that AI has not yet led to widespread job displacement. Chandar was recently among a high-profile group of economists who signed a letter urging policymakers to act quickly to respond to AI-induced job impacts.
In a research paper published in November 2025, Chandar and his co-authors measured the AI “exposure” of certain jobs – how well AI can complete certain tasks. Professionals like mathematicians, computer programmers, and translators were classified as more exposed, while other professions, including athletes and nursing aides that rely heavily on human interaction, were categorized as the least exposed.
While the labor impacts have not been widespread, Chandar found evidence of hiring slowdown for early-career workers between the ages of 22 and 25. That slowdown was especially pronounced for early careers jobs in AI-exposed sectors. Bharat cautioned that it is difficult to disentangle whether AI or other factors such as remote work are causing the stagnating job growth for young workers.
“The economy is constantly evolving,” Chandar said during the town hall. “[It’s] still an open question about what’s going to happen with the labor market going forward. But we’ve had these kinds of transitions in the past, and we’ve been able to weather that.”
Jane Lu, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, said that a better lens for analyzing AI labor market impact would focus on components of a job that can be automated using AI.
“Within each job, there’s some tasks that you do that are more measurable,” she said. “Those are the tasks that are very well suited to be automated, no matter how prestigious the job around them might be.”
The parts of the job that require expert human judgment will remain valuable to companies, Wu said. However, the trend of entry-level jobs being cut due to AI is concerning, she said. If judgment can’t be cultivated through first jobs, companies could see a skills bottleneck. To address this issue, Wu said education programs should shift from teaching students about how to do things – since skills can quickly become obsolete from technology – to fostering good judgment.
Mitchell Stevens, a Stanford sociologist who researches lifelong learning and alternative education forms, said AI-facilitated disruption is an opportunity to reimagine the United States’ current educational system by viewing learning as a life-long pursuit.
During the 20th century, Stevens said, human lifespans increased by decades; Americans invested in universal schooling and attendance to post-secondary institutions increased drastically. But, Stevens said, learning doesn’t need to occur at school.
“Early-life learning happens everywhere. It’s agnostic about credentials. I can learn in temple or synagogue or mosque or church. I can learn at work. I can learn at play. I can learn at home, and it spans the entire workforce,” Stevens said. “If we thought about learning as the goal rather than schools and credentials as the goal, we might be able to imagine a different human capital system.”
Becker has contributed to several pieces of state legislation regulating AI. He co-authored the California AI Transparency Act, a law that mandates AI developers with more than 1 million monthly users or visitors create a disclosure tool that determines whether content is AI-generated. The law will take effect Aug. 1.
He also co-authored a law that requires developers to implement certain safety guardrails for companion chatbots, such as issuing conspicuous notifications to remind the user that the chatbot is AI and not human. It holds companies legally liable if their chatbots don’t fulfill the law’s requirements.
