{"id":109871,"date":"2026-07-17T18:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/109871\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T18:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:42:14","slug":"labor-department-eyes-ai-curriculum-akin-to-chinas-teachings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/109871\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor Department eyes AI curriculum akin to China\u2019s teachings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Labor is working closely with two other agencies to develop AI education for U.S. students that mirrors China\u2019s curriculum for teaching the emerging technology, its acting secretary told lawmakers Thursday.<\/p>\n

During his confirmation hearing<\/a> to be the permanent DOL secretary, Keith Sonderling told members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee that the Trump administration is taking AI education \u201cvery seriously\u201d from a \u201cnational competitive\u201d and workforce development perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an exchange with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Sonderling said the DOL has partnered with the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education to \u201cdevelop that AI curriculum that China has.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they\u2019re teaching them in the second grade,\u201d Sonderling said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re not doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The big challenge, he noted, is ensuring that AI education is up to date \u2014 no small feat given how quickly the technology is evolving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To address that issue, Sonderling said the DOL\u2019s yet-to-be-launched AI workforce hub<\/a> allows the agency to enter into memorandums of understanding with tech developers and companies. The information gleaned from those MOUs should give Labor officials a better idea of what the private sector needs from its workers.<\/p>\n

The agency wants \u201cto make sure that American workers and students have those baseline skills they need,\u201d Sonderling said. \u201cBecause right now, you have kids in high school, you have kids in middle school who think they\u2019re not going to have a job, and you have employees who think they\u2019re going to lose their job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the fear on both parts is not helping anybody,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd to be able to get rid of that fear, we need to have education. To be able to get that education, we need the information from these companies designing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will \u201ctake this over\u201d and navigate the job loss vs. job augmentation debate with real data behind it, Sonderling said. He pointed specifically to a request for information<\/a> published last week seeking comment on adding an AI component<\/a> to the BLS\u2019s American Time Use Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need that data,\u201d Hawley said. \u201cWe need it in order to make informed choices, and I think we\u2019ve got a lot of hard choices to make with regard to AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville was particularly enthusiastic about Sonderling\u2019s plans for a federal artificial intelligence curriculum, telling him that if he\u2019s elected governor of Alabama in November, he plans to push for AI education in elementary school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, our education system\u2019s abysmal right now. It\u2019s going to heck in a handbasket. I worked it for 35 years,\u201d the former Auburn football coach said. \u201cI know our federal government\u2019s being broken because of all this fraud. But we have to be able to educate our kids in this AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEducation needs to lead to jobs,\u201d Sonderling replied.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Matt<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by Matt Bracken
\n\t\t\tMatt Bracken is the editor in chief of FedScoop. Before joining Scoop News Group in 2023, Matt worked in various editing, reporting and digital roles at Morning Consult, The Baltimore Sun and the Arizona Daily Star. You can reach him on Signal at MattBracken.33 or email him at matt.bracken@scoopnewsgroup.com.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Labor is working closely with two other agencies to develop AI education for U.S. students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,3766,25,111,46832,1381,36438,36801,35663,56609],"class_list":["post-109871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-workforce","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-department-of-education","tag-department-of-labor","tag-josh-hawley","tag-keith-sonderling","tag-national-science-foundation-nsf","tag-tommy-tuberville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}