Section 1 Short title
This Act may be cited as the “AI Workforce Assessment and Research Enhancement Act” or the “AWARE Act”.
AI Workforce Assessment and Research Enhancement Act
A BILL
To direct the Bureau of Labor Statistics to report on the usage of artificial intelligence in the workplace.
Sec. 2 Findings
Congress finds the following:
Artificial intelligence (in this section referred to as “AI”) has significant potential for workplace applications and may alter labor market demand by automating, augmenting, or creating workplace tasks and changing the nature of work across industries and occupations.
Policymakers, educators, workforce training providers, businesses, workers, and researchers would benefit from improved data and analysis to understand and respond to the effects of AI on employment, occupations, tasks, wages, hiring, training, and general workforce needs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor is the principal Federal agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating labor market and workforce statistics through employer-side, worker-side, and longitudinal statistical programs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts surveys and data collection activities relating to employment, wages, occupations, labor force participation, work arrangements, and business conditions.
The data collection programs of the Bureau of Labor Statistics provide essential information on labor market conditions and workforce trends, but were not designed to adequately measure on a timely basis—
employer adoption of AI technologies;
worker-level use of AI technologies within jobs and occupations;
AI-related changes in workplace tasks, duties, and work organization;
AI-related training, retraining, or upskilling activities;
the effects of AI on hiring, vacancies, hours, wages, contracting arrangements, or employment levels; or
the emergence of new workplace duties, tasks, job titles, or staffing needs associated with AI.
Certain related concepts are measured in other Federal statistical programs, including programs administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, but important gaps remain in the issuance of timely, representative, and consistent labor market data.
Effective measurement of AI in the workforce may require coordinated employer-side and worker-side data collection approaches in order to capture business adoption, worker experience, task-level changes, and labor market adjustment effects.
Improved measurement of AI use and its labor market effects will strengthen workforce analysis, support further economic and workforce policy development, improve employment projections and related research, and provide employers, workers, and educators with more information to more effectively respond to technological change in their workplaces.
Sec. 3 Labor statistics reporting on the usage of artificial intelligence
In general— Section 4 of the Act of March 4, 1913, titled “An Act to create a Department of Labor” (29 U.S.C. 2) is amended—
in the first sentence, by inserting “which shall include full and complete statistics on the usage of artificial intelligence (as defined in section 5002 of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 (15 U.S.C. 9401)) in such conditions of labor and such products and distribution,” after “full and complete statistics of the conditions of labor and the products and distribution of the products of the same,”; and
in the second sentence, by striking “and the total hours of employment,” and inserting “the total hours of employment, and the usage of artificial intelligence (as defined in section 5002 of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 (15 U.S.C. 9401)),”.
Deadline for initial collection— The Bureau of Labor Statistics shall begin collecting, under section 4 of the Act of March 4, 1913, titled “An Act to create a Department of Labor” (29 U.S.C. 2), as amended by subsection (a), the statistics on the usage of artificial intelligence described in the amendments made by paragraphs (1) and (2) of subsection (a) not later than 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act.
Sec. 4 Artificial intelligence defined
In this Act, the term artificial intelligence has the meaning given the term in section 5002 of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 (15 U.S.C. 9401).