Newport City Councilor Xay Khamsyvoravong, Democratic candidate for Rhode Island Lieutenant Governor

Absolutely.

I mean, we've discussed AI a lot here on the show.

Our chairperson, the coalition's chairperson, Chris Parisi, is on the task force, the AI task force.

We'll be talking with Representative, former Congressman Langevin about this as well.

But I think, you know, a lot of times people say AI and they think about, you know, the chats and everything there.

But I like to think of it more of a as a global technology change.

So you sort of like the Internet or radio or television, these other massive changes that have happened over the years.

And, you know, to your point, you know, think about robotics and things of that nature.

There are a lot of things can be replaced.

Trades probably not so much.

It's definitely an area where we see less input of of technology, especially, you know, in my world of hospitality.

You know, there are certainly uses for AI, but not as much as the actual person to person relation.

But, you know, How do you see, because you've been on the government's workforce board, how do you see it affecting small business owners? Not so much the employees, but the owners themselves?

Yeah, a lot of the back office functions that you rely on, I think, could be improved to the use of AI.

You've got to adapt quickly to that because I think that you're going to see AI in turn looking at how small businesses operate and where there are opportunities for potentially them to step into that space.

What I would recommend is taking advantage of one of the programs that we have at the Workforce Board right now.

We have a program called Work Immersion.

The Governor's Workforce Board covers up to 75% of the compensation that you provide to somebody who is looking to get exposure and experience in your business.

So think of high school students or college students that might be looking for an opportunity.

I want you to think back to 10 years ago when a high school intern might have showed up at your small business and said, I want to work for you this summer and I want to do social media.

And the business owner might've looked at them and said, I don't, I've got the Facebook.

Like, what do you mean social media? And they said, no, I wanna help you with your social media.

And they might've waved it off, right? I would argue that the way that you thought about social media, what ended up happening is probably what's rapidly gonna happen with AI.

We know that young people are very interested and very focused on applications for AI.

We shouldn't be embracing and leaning into how we can give them work exposure to see where that also might benefit our businesses.