Artificial intelligence is already changing the way many people work, and New York State is now trying to identify who stands to be most affected. Governor Kathy Hochul has launched a new series of meetings designed to hear directly from workers whose jobs could be reshaped by the technology, part of an effort to understand the human consequences of the rapid spread of automated tools across the economy.
The focus of this week's session was women employed in administrative and clerical positions, a group the state says is heavily concentrated in the kinds of roles most exposed to change. According to figures cited at the meeting, women make up 84 percent of New York's clerical workforce, meaning any large shift in how those jobs are performed would fall disproportionately on them.
Molly Kinder, the founder of the Breakwater Initiative, told the session that clerical and customer service jobs are among those with the largest chances of being replaced by artificial intelligence, including widely used systems such as ChatGPT. She pointed to signs that the trend may already be under way rather than a distant prospect.
Kinder said national data already shows a slowing in employment in clerical and customer service roles, an early indicator that demand for such positions may be softening as automated tools take on more routine tasks. The concern, she explained, is not only whether jobs disappear but how quickly the change arrives and how much room workers have to adapt.
She stressed that the stakes are especially high because these are middle class jobs that many families rely on. The women in them, she said, have fewer cushions if change comes really fast, and the alternatives available to them often pay thousands of dollars less, leaving affected workers financially worse off even if they find new employment.
The gathering was the second in what the state has framed as a continuing series of AI listening sessions. By structuring the effort as a sequence of meetings rather than a single event, officials appear to be seeking input from a range of sectors and workers over time as the technology's effects become clearer across different parts of the economy.
Hochul has said the goal of the initiative is to make sure the AI boom does not leave workers behind, positioning the state to respond to the disruption rather than simply absorb it. The sessions are intended to shape how New York thinks about protecting employees whose livelihoods could be altered as artificial intelligence becomes a fixture of the workplace.