In today’s CEO Daily: Inside the bipartisan effort to create an AI-ready workforceThe big leadership story: Micron’s ‘paradigm shift’The markets: Down globally, as the U.S. tech selloff seems poised to continue.Plus: All the news and watercooler chat fromFortune.
Good morning. “We don’t want to wait for the ‘then what’ scenario,” former Indiana governor Eric Holcomb told me this week, “when there are 3 billion bots and agents and entry-level unemployment goes from four to nine to 18 to 30. Then what?”
That question is the engine behind RAISE US, a nonprofit initiative that Holcomb (a Republican) and former commerce secretary and Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo (a Democrat) launched yesterday to convene AI companies, employers, philanthropies, and educators to bring capital, creativity, and a new spirit of cooperation to create an AI-ready workforce, not to mention AI-resilient jobs.
Here’s why you should care: it’s an intriguing first step that could spark new ideas, policies and pilot projects that actually work. It creates a hub where leaders can come together to tackle a problem that’s not being effectively addressed. “I don’t hear a lot of concrete, specific, practical potential solutions to manage a transition period to an AI economy,” Raimondo told me. “We don’t have a super track record as a country managing a transition without high levels of unemployment.”
The challenge will be how to build trust and drive change. Right now, the coalition is weighted heavily towards tech players that are both experiencing and driving job disruption. It could give cover to companies like Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft and the OpenAI Foundation that are disrupting jobs while pushing against concrete metrics and regulation that could hold them accountable for AI’s impact.
Few understand the challenge of creating quality job growth like Holcomb and Raimondo. A 2021 Brookings study found that much of Indiana’s job growth came in low-wage sectors as middle-wage jobs went away. In Rhode Island, another study found, Raimondo reduced unemployment but didn’t do much to improve the quality of jobs. That’s less a rub on their tenure as governors than the reality that it’s easier to maintain an ecosystem of skilled talent and good jobs than rebuild it when the damage is done.
RAISE US might want to expand its ‘hub’ to include companies in sectors like manufacturing that are trying to find skilled talent, not replace it with technology. We need more conversations and more voices. That’s why I’m particularly excited about a ‘generations’ dinner that we’re co-hosting with Cengage CEO Michael Hansen in his home next month as part of the Fortune CEO Initiative. CEOs will each bring a young adult guest—I’m coming with my son—to talk about the future of work. These digital natives grasp technology’s upside and downside—and we need to hear their take on the path to a good job in the AI economy.Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
Micron’s ‘paradigm shift’
Micron reported $41.5 billion in revenue and $25.11 in earnings per share Tuesday, blowing past Wall Street estimates and guiding for $50 billion in revenue next quarter. "The historical ceiling is now a floor," said Stifel analyst Brian Chin, arguing the results amount to "concrete evidence of a paradigm shift."
The U.S.'s Suez moment?
Ray Dalio and a chorus of analysts have spent the past four months comparing the Iran war to the 1956 Suez Crisis, arguing that America's failure to achieve decisive victory, its $39 trillion debt load, and a 30-year low in the dollar's share of global reserves all fit the classic pattern of imperial overreach. "Both sides know that the final battle, which will make clear which side won and which side lost, still lies ahead," Dalio wrote.A tuition reset
Whitman College is making tuition far more predictable by capping what families pay at 10% of adjusted gross income. The promise, based on FAFSA-reported income, aims to remove the mystery from college pricing while guaranteeing the cap for four years.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.40% this morning. The last session closed flat. The STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.80% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.65% in early trading.** Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 4.15%. South Korea’s KOSPI **was down 5.81% today. **China’s CSI 300 was down 3.03%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 1.76%. India’s markets **are closed today. Bitcoin was down at $60K.
Around the watercooler
The Iran war is accelerating the EV transition faster than any climate policy ever did—but it’s still just not that much by Catherina Gioino
Google CEO tells graduates to stop obsessing over first jobs because ‘very few moments are make or break’ in life—a lesson he learned in Vegas by Preston Fore
Larry Ellison quietly gave $45 million to a pro-Trump group—then Oracle landed a starring role in a $500 billion AI buildout by Sydney Lake
Private equity gets cut of two of Taylor Swift’s biggest pop hits through Max Martin’s catalog sale by Mia Osmonbekov
Deviled eggs, seltzer and a burger you can’t quit: The GLP-1 crowd is (halfway) reinventing the American BBQ by Nick Lichtenberg
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.
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