CONCEPT
Social Infrastructure for the AI Transition
The system of portable benefits, retraining programs, economic support, and educational reform required to help workers navigate AI-driven displacement — the contemporary counterpart of the welfare state Webb helped design.
Social infrastructure for the AI transition is the system of institutional supports that enables workers to navigate AI-driven displacement without bearing the full cost of transitions they did not choose. It encompasses portable benefits that follow workers across employers and employment statuses, comprehensive retraining programs with economic support during adjustment, career counselling oriented to the specific uncertainties of AI-era occupational change, educational reform that develops higher-order competencies rather than the skills AI now absorbs, and public investment in AI systems designed to complement human capabilities rather than replace them. It is the third of four institutional domains Webb's framework identifies as essential to the AI transition, alongside minimum standards, collective voice, and governance reform.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The welfare state Webb helped design — unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, public health, universal education — was the institutional response to the industrial-era risks Webb had documented in her early investigations. Each risk was, in