How the U.S. can maintain its edge in AI without leaving workers behind | Brookings

On March 3, 2025, Senior Fellow Mark Muro testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Science, Manufacturing, and Competitiveness.

Muro’s testimony stressed the importance of embracing the ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to expand human expertise, while addressing valid fears about its powers. Ultimately, he said, the goal must be to keep the technology pro-human and pro-community.

There is currently a pervasive worry about AI’s potential negative consequences for workers and communities. Muro argued that Congress could help dispel some of these worries and bolster the current state of AI development by building a national AI adoption platform that would simultaneously drive technological growth and ensure workers are not left behind.

In his written testimony, Muro stressed five key elements a platform like this should have:

Research: Though the United States is the current leader in AI research and design, current growth rates indicate that other AI innovators such as China will make up a larger chunk of global AI investment by 2027. While U.S. government funding for AI research increased from 2024 to 2025, it did not double between 2019 and 2026, as the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence advocated for. Additionally, current AI research is heavily reliant on private sector funding. To ensure the U.S. maintains its lead in AI research and development, Congress should increase government funding for this research significantly, as well as expand investments for basic research and mechanisms that broaden access to essential AI resources. This could take the form of increased investment in universities or revitalization of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-led National AI Research Institutes program.

Regional innovation clusters: This aspect of a national AI support platform would focus on promoting growth in up-and-coming regions. The national AI economy stands to benefit from federal investment in these “emerging AI clusters,” which could take the form of increased research and computational support from programs such as the National AI Research Institutes and the National AI Research Resource, or challenge grants similar to the NSF’s Regional Innovation Engines.

Talent: The development of elite AI talent, as well as a broadly AI-ready workforce, is crucial to any national AI adoption platform. Visa reforms and a focus on AI literacy in higher education would bolster AI readiness across both the top scholar level and the wider workforce. Similarly, Congress could promote the creation of regional AI learning networks that would partner with employers to train employees in AI skills.

Infrastructure: While programs such as the CHIPS and Science Act’s subsidies for the construction of semiconductor factories have begun to address infrastructure gaps in the AI economy, current data center development has heightened demand for computing resources and energy. To ensure supply matches demand, the federal government could create more clean energy generation sources and grid links, as well as facilitate more strategic data center development.

Worker security: Worker security is a key part of any national platform for AI development to ensure workers are not left behind in the process of AI adoption. Recent Brookings analysis projects that many industries will face high levels of disruption from generative AI in coming years. This could endanger worker mobility and spike unemployment. One way to mitigate these potential negative impacts would be “active labor market policies” that retrain workers or provide them flexible benefits not tied to one employer. Another option could be temporary income support through a “Universal Basic Adjustment Benefit” also aimed at helping displaced workers transition to new positions.

Innovative firms of all kinds—whether AI developers themselves, AI-adopting firms, or AI startups entering the space—are providing abundant grounds for excitement about AI’s potential, Muro wrote. Their entrepreneurship gives much cause for optimism. Yet sustaining that optimism requires sustaining those firms’ growth and Americans’ confidence in the future—and that means reinvesting in the fundamentals of American AI strength and vibrancy.

To read Muro’s full testimony, click here. To watch the testimony video, click here.