US needs to be the one to ‘capture the benefits’ of AI: Labor Secy.

Yahoo Finance Video and Jennifer Schonberger

Thu, February 12, 2026 at 2:30 AM GMT+9

US Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer joins Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Jennifer Schonberger to discuss the growing AI demand in the US and how artificial intelligence should work to assist the American worker, not replace them.

Be sure to catch Yahoo Finance’s full interview with US Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

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Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

you brought up AI because a lot of people have said that that’s going to be a driving factor for productivity. But I do want to ask you about the impact of AI on the job market because Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei was out recently saying that quote, AI isn’t a substitute for specific human jobs, but rather a general labor substitute for humans. He says he thinks AI could lead to a world of less labor intensive companies. Meanwhile, Yale predicting that white collar workers could be displaced by AI. What is your response to these two? What impact do you see AI having on the job market?

00:46 Speaker B

Well, certainly fearmongering is not what we do here at the Department of Labor. We don’t create the market demands, but we answer the market demands with the workforce. Again, what I’ve been seeing is the the confidence that these employers have on how AI is going to assist them in streamlining and efficiency, but it’s not to replace the American worker.

01:08 Speaker B

One of the things the Department of Labor is doing is we want to measure that economic um data points that come back. So we have launched the AI hub here at the Department of Labor where we can collect the data from the from the free market to see are we hitting the targets? Because the excitement on the ground is, we’re using AI to assist the American worker, not replace them. So I am excited about it. I sit on the AI task force for this administration to make sure that we are dedicating resources to be proficient and literate in AI for our future workforce.

01:41 Speaker B

We’re getting those grant dollars out to the states. We’re we’re working with our state partners so they can have it in hand so that we can make sure that we’re answering the call because I can tell you this, somebody’s going to capture the benefits of AI. We want the United States of America to be the one to capture those benefits. So, the name of the game is we need to be AI dominant. The president has been clear and the Department of Labor is doing all the work they can do so that we can protect the American worker, keep their jobs.

02:11 Speaker B

And we have seen an inversion, right? People thought that maybe the blue collars uh workforce would be displaced by AI. Um it’s really been an inversion, the dirty jobs. We see Mike Ro talking about it often. I’ve sat with Mike Ro at Ford uh company in uh uh in Michigan to talk about this. And I can tell you what we’re excited about is that we’re we we need more construction, we need manufacturing, we need operators, we need machinists, we need electricians. That’s an exciting part. Mortgage paying jobs, we’re training the workforce, AI is not going to displace that. It’s only going to assist the American worker.

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