admin
Fox News’ America’s Newsroom brought a blunt, necessary conversation to the table this week when hosts turned to a Gen Z panel to discuss how the AI revolution is already reshaping work for young Americans. The warning from Dana Perino that we are perched on a dangerous precipice was not alarmism so much as a wake-up call; this is about livelihoods and the future prospects of an entire generation.
The two Gen Z voices on the panel — Isabel Brown, a prominent young conservative commentator, and Xaviaer DuRousseau, known for his work with conservative outlets — are hardly alarmists; they’re practical, skeptical Americans who see the writing on the wall about automation eating jobs and middle-class opportunity. These are young people who get that ideology and virtue-signaling won’t pay the bills when the boss plugs in a cheaper, faster algorithm.
The sober reality from policy researchers is stark: AI will change vast swaths of work, and not just routine manual labor — increasingly it threatens knowledge work too, putting young office professionals and white-collar workers at risk. Global analyses warn that many jobs will either be transformed or disappear unless workers are reskilled, and employers and schools must face that responsibility instead of pretending everything will be fine.
This is where the left’s priorities collapse under their own hypocrisy. Universities spend billions pushing ideology and administrators’ pet projects while graduates leave with debt and skills that are easy to replicate with software. If we want young Americans to have dignity and stable careers, conservatives should push for a nationwide revival of apprenticeships, trade schools, and skills-first hiring that actually aligns training with market demand.
Washington’s default response — glossy committees, endless studies, and more regulation — will only slow the entrepreneurial dynamism that creates new jobs. Instead, policymakers should incentivize businesses to retrain workers, slash barriers to on-the-job learning, and stop strangling the small firms that still hire Americans. Free markets and local solutions, not centralized planning, will move people into productive, AI-resistant roles faster than another federal task force.
There’s also a role for tech companies to do right by the country: fund retraining at scale, commit to transparency about their deployments, and partner with community colleges to produce usable credentials. Conservatives should demand that firms benefiting from American infrastructure and markets reinvest in the American workforce rather than shipping profits overseas or replacing workers overnight.
Finally, this moment is a test of conservative principles: defend the dignity of work, protect the family wage, and ensure opportunity is real for the next generation. We must be unapologetically pro-worker and pro-innovation at the same time — pushing for policies that empower Americans to adapt, compete, and win in the AI era rather than watching our kids fall behind while elites cheer from Silicon Valley.
