Julia Regier is a policy and research manager at MIT's Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work, where she focuses on workforce and policy impacts. Her path here was anything but straight, from studying philosophy at Wellesley to an MBA at Yale to translating dense economics research for people who don't speak economics.
We talk about what the data shows for workers without college degrees (spoiler: it's not great, and it’s been getting worse since 1980), why the self-checkout AI surveillance story is a perfect case study in automation gone wrong, and what it would take to redirect AI development toward something that works for workers, not just around them.
We also get into the market failure at the heart of how AI is being built, why a handful of people setting the vision for all of us is a problem, and what policy levers could shift things. Julia also makes the moral case, loud and clear, for a living wage, and we’re here for it.
Chapters
00:00 - Intro - Felicia and Rachel talk local politics, civic assemblies, and more
20:28 - Welcome Julia! Her Nonlinear Path: Philosophy, Recruiting & Landing at MIT
25:00 - Worker Ownership, Co-ops & Why It's Harder Than It Sounds
29:35 - Job Quality for Workers Without College Degrees: What the Data Shows
37:00 - AI Surveillance, Self-Checkout & the Annoyance Factor
43:45 - Taking the Long View: Policy Impacts & the Case for Investing in Children
49:40 - Who's Setting the Vision for AI (and Why That's a Problem)
54:26 - Pro-Worker AI: Policy Levers That Could Actually Change Course
62:00 - Gender, Diversity & Who's Missing from the Research
65:20 - If You Could Change One Thing + Closing Thoughts
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