Recently I’ve had the opportunity to speak at several conferences and convenings — the Milken Institute Global Conference, CalMatters Ideas Festival, UC Berkeley Possibility Lab’s Engaging with Possibility Summit, and the Social Innovation Summit, among others. The conversations ranged from AI and the future of work to the need for state government to evolve in light of all that’s changing around us. What I heard reaffirmed my belief that California is at a critical juncture and sharpened my thinking about what this moment demands of us. 

A freight train is coming 

The workers most exposed to AI disruption are central to our economy. Yet they are largely absent from the public debate, which has focused on white-collar workers and recent college graduates. But the workers with the least cushion are those without a college degree — disproportionately women and women of color — working in office and clerical roles, health and human services, and customer service. Former Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Kinder noted, “I worry that A.I. will be to high-school-educated women what deindustrialization was to high-school-educated men.”   

Across these conversations, one thing is clear: the pace of change is outrunning both workers and the institutions, especially our public systems, meant to support them. (This is an issue Irvine is exploring in its recent blog series on a worker-driven approach to AI.) California’s workforce training system was not designed for continuous retraining, nor for supporting displaced or disengaged workers at the scale AI disruption will require. Neither is the safety net — unemployment insurance, food supports — which the pandemic already exposed as insufficient. That was a stress test. What is coming may be harder. 

What is working and what it signals 

The good news is there are bright spots. For example, at the regional level, cross-sector coalitions are demonstrating what becomes possible when community voices shape economic strategies. Irvine’s Priority Communities initiative — now active in six California cities — has helped leverage more than $1.2 billion in public funding by grounding economic development plans in what residents and workers need. The state’s California Jobs First program took this model statewide and showed some progress in rethinking economic development by supporting 13 regional, cross-sectoral collaboratives to create regional economic plans from the ground up.  

And in the workforce system, leaders are emerging. NOVAworks, a San Mateo County-based grantee of Irvine’s Better Careers initiative, has become a national model for AI literacy within workforce development — embedding AI skills into industry-specific training and using AI tools to strengthen career coaching and job search support.   

Something else has also shifted. Ideas that would have seemed implausible a few years ago — new forms of income support, tax changes that keep workers in jobs, approaches that ensure AI’s gains are broadly shared — are now part of a serious policy conversation, one that includes worker advocates, policymakers, and even some of the AI companies themselves.    

What California’s next chapter requires 

California is approaching a gubernatorial transition, which offers a practical opening. The decisions made in the next 18 months will shape working conditions and economic opportunity for years. 

Affordability came up in every discussion at the conferences I attended, and for good reason. A recent UC Berkeley IGS poll found that 40 percent of likely voters named reducing the cost of living as the top priority for the next governor — well ahead of every other issue. Affordability isn’t simply a personal struggle — it signifies how well our economy is working for people. Housing, childcare, and wages are not separate from the AI and workforce conversation. When the basics are out of reach, workers cannot build financial resilience, and no amount of workforce training will close that gap.  

The state also needs a serious effort to modernize its workforce and safety net systems. And we need tax reforms that address the wild swings in state revenues, incentivize employers to keep and upskill workers, and ensure the financial benefits of AI are shared broadly.  

The throughline in all of it is this: listen to workers from the start. They are closest to the problems and the solutions. Too often, reforms are built around what decision-makers think workers need rather than what workers and their communities are saying. The organizations doing the most effective work on economic mobility — many of them Irvine grantees — are the ones closest to and accountable to workers. And as funders, investing in organizing and advocacy so workers have a real say in the decisions that shape their lives is essential. 

Defining what comes next  

California has a chance to define what comes next — an AI future shaped with workers, not just for them. That will require the state to move with more urgency, and it will require the rest of us — funders, employers, advocates, policymakers — to act accordingly. 

The window for change is open, but it won’t stay open indefinitely. We need bold leadership to innovate and change the way we support workers and their families. We don’t have the luxury of getting this wrong. 

For a fuller picture of what AI means for California’s workers and what Irvine is learning, read the full AI blog series.