Google invests $75M to teach one million Americans how to use AI

Google announced Friday that it is releasing a course aimed at teaching one million Americans how to use artificial intelligence tools.

As part of the rollout, the tech giant also announced that its charitable arm, Google.org, has budgeted $75 million in grants for AI skills training to people in rural and underserved areas.

The new AI skills course will be available for $49 on Coursera, a for-profit online course provider. 

The announcement comes after Google scrapped its rules requiring suppliers and staffing firms it works with to provide good pay and benefits to their employees - along with laying off thousands of employees despite turning record profits.

Google announced two new initiatives: One is a self-paced course on AI skills, the other is a grant program for AI job skills training.

READ MORE: Is AI quietly replacing staff at Google?

 

Major tech companies, including Google, continue to lay off employees amid advancements in AI and despite increasing revenue 

According to the course listing, it will teach users how to 'Use generative AI tools to help develop ideas and content, make more informed decisions, and speed up daily work tasks,' and to do so responsibly.

The course also promises that learners will 'Develop strategies to stay up-to-date in the emerging landscape of AI.'

As far as the $75 million in grants from the AI Opportunity Fund, those will go to 'best-in-class workforce development and education organizations,' according to a Google spokesperson.

Organizations like Goodwill Industries International will receive some of the training funds 'to empower Americans to leverage AI technology to boost productivity and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.'

Goodwill's career assistance programs have been praised in the past for helping workers secure permanent roles with livable salaries and benefits.

But the organization still pays disabled employees less than minimum wage under the guise of job skills training - a program allowed by the US Department of Labor.

Some disabled employees working under this exemption earn less than $1 an hour.

And just one week ago, Google announced it was rolling back its rules that required its business partners to provide their workers with a living wage.  

Google rolled out new programs to train workers in AI. Meanwhile, the company continues to fight federal labor authority attempts to make Google treat employees fairly.

From 2019 until last week, Google had required the businesses it contracted with to pay their employees at least $15 an hour and provide them with health insurance and benefits.

But because Google was exercising some degree of control over those workers, the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said this made Google a 'joint employer' of them.

Therefore, the tech company would be required to bargain with their unions - something the company is notoriously resistant to doing.

Google has refused to bargain with unionized workers much closer to home, including at YouTube, which it owns.

When YouTube contractors unanimously joined the Alphabet Workers Union and insisted on bargaining with Google over working conditions last year, the tech giant refused.

Google has regularly suppressed its workers' protected activities, the National Labor Relations Board has found.

This refusal was against the law, ruled the NLRB in January of this year.

These are not isolated incidents, either. Google has been accused of illegally firing workers for unionizing, interfering with protected activities, and generally engaging in illegal behavior to suppress its workers from exercising their rights to organize for better working conditions, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The new charitable programs that Google announced today also come on the heels of high-profile layoffs. 

Google reported that it made a $20.7 billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2023, an increase of 52 percent compared to the previous year, yet its workforce shrunk by four percent.

Kenneth Smith, an engineering manager at Google, said management notified him that his job was being eliminated in an email and complained in a LinkedIn post that the company didn't 'acknowledge their humanity.'

'I've harbored a lot of anger and frustration at Google's leadership for how they handled the layoffs of twelve thousand people last January,' he wrote, adding: 'And I don't see a lot of evidence that they've learned much from that experience.'

The move came shortly after Google launched its large language model (LLM) called Goose, and after it announced a major investment in AI startup anthropic.

The new AI course is self-paced and included 10 hours of material spread out over five modules.