No one knows just many green jobs will be created in the United States over the next decade, but there's little disagreement that the demand will create a huge opportunity for the next generation of workers. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, an estimated 800 billion will flow from the federal government over the next 10 years to fund massive clean energy programs, from solar and wind installations to energy-efficient buildings to business and neighborhood microgrid power production. Billions more in state and federal money will help build out an electrified transportation system, including electric cars, trucks, trains and the infrastructure to support them. High school and university educators are reporting increasing interest in "green" careers: jobs that help address global warming and other environmental issues, with enough of a future to pay the bills and then some. Given the drumbeat of bad news on a changing climate, it might even be considered a matter of survival.

Investments in housing, transit and job training emerged as top priorities for the Bay State as it recovers from the pandemic, according to a future of work report released by the Baker Administration. "The changing ways of working may shift what we think of as the'center of gravity' here in Massachusetts away from the urban core and toward the rest of the state," Baker said at a Tuesday morning press conference at the Tufts Launchpad location for BioLabs in Boston, a recipient of a Baker administration Workforce Training Fund Program grant. The report estimates that Massachusetts will need to produce 125,000 to 200,000 housing units by 2030, a $1 billion investment, with a focus on aiding homeownership among communities of color. Baker also announced $240 million in funding for workforce training programs. The report says up to 400,000 people may need to change occupations over the next decade to keep up with workplace trends.

A paper coauthored by over 112 researchers across 160 data and social science teams found that AI and statistical models, when used to predict six life outcomes for children, parents, and households, weren't very accurate even when trained on 13,000 data points from over 4,000 families. They assert that the work is a cautionary tale on the use of predictive modeling, especially in the criminal justice system and social support programs. "Here's a setting where we have hundreds of participants and a rich data set, and even the best AI results are still not accurate," said study co-lead author Matt Salganik, a professor of sociology at Princeton and interim director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "These results show us that machine learning isn't magic; there are clearly other factors at play when it comes to predicting the life course." The study, which was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the fruit of the Fragile Families Challenge, a multi-year collaboration that sought to recruit researchers to complete a predictive task by predicting the same outcomes using the same data.

A Pew Research Foundation study examining the future of work and job training found a belief among some experts that artificial intelligence and automation threaten not just millions of jobs, but also the future of capitalism. Released Wednesday, the non-scientific study titled "The Future of Jobs and Jobs Training" is the seventh in an eight-part "Future of the Internet" study being conducted by the Pew Research Center and Elon University. More than 1,400 AI researchers, tech experts, professors, startup CEOs, and members of the general public responded to the survey. Respondents include leaders from companies like Google and Microsoft and educators from MIT, Harvard, and other universities, as well as a mix of other people interested in AI and the future of work. Tech experts include computer scientists and AI researchers but also people from internet governance groups, futurists, and startup founders.

U.S. education systems must prepare students to compete with robots in the future's job market, warns Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor told AM 970's John Catsimatidis: 'This is not something that's science fiction. This is happening as we speak. The failed 2016 Republican presidential candidate said: 'The looming challenge of automation and artificial intelligence and the rapid advancement of technology brings great benefits but also creates huge challenges.' Jeb Bush, pictured in September 2016, said that education in the U.S. needs an overhaul to help workers compete with robots in the future's job market The former Florida governor and failed 2016 Republican presidential candidate said: 'This is not something that's science fiction. This is happening as we speak.

In the final months of the Obama White House, I was honored to be invited by the President's National Economic Council to discuss the recent report, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy. I was joined by several other venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to comment on how the tech community sees AI -- its potential for positive impact as well as the implications for our workforce. As a VC at NextWorld Capital, a big area of my investment focus is on the companies that are digitizing and automating the physical world, including drones, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. As an undergraduate and graduate student at MIT studying AI in the late 90's, I saw the commercial potential of technologies such as computer vision and robotics, but now I am convinced that AI is ready to drive systemic changes to businesses and services of all kinds. This new wave of technology will have an outsized impact on what I call the "field office," operated by deskless workers are building and servicing physical goods.