The Great Mismatch: Bridging AI and Economic Opportunity

Xavier (Xav) de Souza Briggs is a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. He is also a senior advisor and co-founder of What Works Plus, a collaborative of philanthropic donors promoting equity and resilience through America’s generational investments in infrastructure and climate action, and senior advisor to Freedman Consulting, LLC, a mission-driven consulting firm focused on public-interest projects, including What Works Plus. An award-winning educator and researcher, he is also an experienced leader in philanthropy and government.

Known for his wide range of interests and track record of building and reshaping fields, Briggs is an expert on economic opportunity and inclusive growth, racial equity and pluralism, housing, urban and regional development, and democratic governance in the U.S. and abroad. Briggs has testified before Congress on several of these topics.

His work at Brookings has focused on inclusive markets, good jobs, equitable climate action, and tangible ways to advance equity and inclusion in the way government works. He has helped catalyze public conversation about: how big federal bets on “new industrial policy” can generate real and lasting economic benefits for the workers and communities that need it most; likewise the potential for community benefits agreements to make clean energy and other climate investments equitable and adaptive; the power of equity impact analysis (aka “equity scoring” of proposed policies and plans) to help government serve everyone more effectively and strengthen public trust; lessons of the pandemic economy about how to make worker-centered innovation the new default in business; the importance of a “one fair wage” minimum for businesses as well as their workers and local economies; the need to address a disconnect between changing racial attitudes and institutional change in America; the urgency of engaging communities and investing in “shovel-worthy” infrastructure, not just “shovel-ready” projects, to ensure that historic federal investments expand access to wellbeing and promote equity; what a more democratic and equitable federalism would require and what it would mean for America’s future; and how to develop successful communities of practice, to drive learning, collaboration, and better outcomes, in and around the public sector.

Molly Kinder is a nationally recognized expert in labor policy, economic inequality, low-wage work, and the present and future of work. Her research at Brookings examines the impact of generative AI on work and workers.

Kinder’s scholarship on workers has been covered widely by national media, and she has appeared regularly on NPR and other media outlets. Her work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, NPR, Business Insider, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and the BBC. Kinder’s research on essential workers has influenced federal policy and state-level programs, and was cited in dozens of city and county government mandates requiring higher pay for frontline workers.

Previously, Kinder was a nonresident senior fellow at New America and directed research for its Work, Workers, and Technology initiative. She is the lead author of a report exploring the perspectives of workers across the country whose jobs are at high risk of automation. Kinder was also a professor of practice at Georgetown University, where she taught a new graduate-level course on the social, economic, and policy implications of AI.

Kinder has over 20 years of experience in public policy, social innovation, research, philanthropy, and teaching. Previously, she co-founded a $200 million social impact fund and was its vice president of policy; served in the Obama administration as a director in a new innovation program; and co-authored one of the Center for Global Development’s best-selling books. Kinder worked overseas in Liberia, India, and Pakistan with the World Bank and government of Liberia. She has an MPA/ID from Harvard’s Kennedy School and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.