If AI could save you five hours a week, the government wants to know: "what would [you] do with that time?" Would you spend "More time with family? Finally launch that Etsy shop? Fix the garage once and for all?"

That's the hopeful opening of a new AI literacy course from the Department of Labor. "Just keep it in mind. That's your WHY for being here."

Late last month, the department launched the course titled "Make America AI-Ready" with a goal to, in the course's own words and emojis, "make AI feel less like a mystery and more like a tool you actually want to use. 💪"

The Trump administration has largely supported the needs of the AI industry. It installed Silicon Valley executives in the White House, repeatedly tried to preempt state AI laws and pushed for hundreds of billions of dollars in AI-related infrastructure investments.

The Labor Department says in a press release that the course is one of its contributions to carrying out the Trump administration's AI Action Plan.

While AI and media literacy teachers praised the overall content and framework of the course, some of the course materials raise government ethics questions. Labor organizers also question whether courses like these will be helpful when it comes to addressing potential workforce changes driven by AI.

The course is solid overall, AI literacy teachers say

There's a great demand for AI literacy courses, said Peter Stone, chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He co-created a course titled "The Essentials of AI for Life and Society" in 2023, which boasts hundreds of students a year.

"There's these sort of hype cycles in artificial intelligence," said Stone. "I think it's important for people to be able to cut through to what's true and also be able to be literate with artificial intelligence, because they're going to need it."

The course totals seven brief daily modules that take less than 10 minutes apiece and is delivered via text message. Every day starts with a lesson, followed by multiple quiz questions.

"For a course that size, there's a limited number of things you can do," said Mike Caulfield, a digital literacy expert at University of Washington Bothell who was not involved in making the course. "I think it's a nice little course in general."

The course covers the principles of using AI effectively, Caulfield said. He reviewed the materials, and found they do a good job addressing the importance of context, being specific about what you want and stressing the need to verify AI's outputs.

But, Caulfield said, "I don't know if the tone is always perfect in some of those responses," He said that "there were just a couple of places where it seemed a little too rosy."

For example, the course kept reminding students of the potential time-saving benefits of AI, which could allow them to do more things outside of work. However, early research evidence suggests that's not happening for most people. In some occupations, like software development, people say AI's introduction has led to "work intensification," where workers end up working on more difficult tasks while AI takes on simpler ones.

The Labor Department's course also links to at least one risky piece of advice, directing students to check out a video titled "101 ways to use AI." The video suggests that students can ask a chatbot whether or not it's okay to eat a foraged mushroom, which could lead to poisoning.

Taylor Stockton, the Department of Labor's chief innovation officer, declined to answer questions related to that particular piece of advice and DOL did not respond to NPR's follow-up requests for comment.

The presence of private companies raises ethics questions

The Labor Department partnered with technology company Arist to deliver the course. The company specializes in delivering short text message-based courses and has worked with organizations including Etsy, the Poynter Institute and the California's governor's office. While DOL developed the course content, Arist delivered the content for free as part of the White House's Pledge to America's Youth initiative without a contracting process, Stockton said.

That arrangement is unusual, said Craig Holman, an expert on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules at the nonprofit, Public Citizen. "[A] company running a government program and not getting paid by the government to do it … sounds exceedingly suspicious to me."

Arist didn't respond to NPR's request for an interview.

Arist was not the only corporate presence in the course. The lesson titled "Put AI to Work For You" lists over a dozen tools. "You're choosing how AI supports your work. Here are a few worth exploring," the course says. It goes on to list chatbots created by well-known AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and xAI, as well as more purpose-specific tools.

Also on the list was the data visualization tool, DataWrapper, which doesn't use AI in any way, according to the company.

Simply listing the products on a government training course, even if no money has changed hands, also raises ethical concerns, Holman said. "That is actually using public resources to promote private interests."

There are laws prohibiting such actions, and it's up to the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute violations. But Holman said the current administration has not been enforcing them.

Stockton said DOL staff are not using this course to endorse any private companies. "We've identified a diverse number of different tools and companies that are out there that [Americans] may or may not choose to consider."

Labor advocates say the course leaves out important context

The Labor Department's stated mission is, in part, to "foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States" and "advance opportunities for profitable employment."

But labor advocates say this course doesn't look like effective worker training.

"Does this [training] make workers' jobs better or safer? Will it help people who want to find a job access high quality, union jobs?" asked Lauren McFerran, executive director of AFL-CIO's Tech Institute and a former chair of the National Labor Relations Board. "I'm not sure that teaching someone how to prompt an LLM is necessarily going to accomplish those goals."

McFerran said the course leaves out key context to help workers navigate the changing workforce shaped by AI. "I just think telling trainees that really the big danger in AI use is that you need to fact check is kind of misleading at best."

She said workers are worried about how management is using AI. "Are you training a product that will eventually take your job? Is your employer going to start demanding unrealistic productivity if, all of a sudden, it's decided that AI can make you ten times faster?"

Stockton, the DOL's chief innovation officer, said that the AI literacy course is just a starting point, and that the department is engaging with stakeholders including labor unions to "invest in programs that allow not just businesses, but also workers to benefit."

He said DOL is talking with unions to join such an initiative, yet to be launched, called AI Workforce Hub. Unions including AFL-CIO, Communication Workers of America and National Nurses United said they have yet to hear from DOL about the initiative.

One of the Labor Department's goals of the AI literacy course appears to be to get people to use AI more.

"Now that you have completed the course, how often do you use AI tools?"
A: Daily or almost daily
B: A few times a week
C: Occasionally, for specific tasks
D: Not yet, but I'm more open to it now

To a student who responds "Occasionally," it responds, in part:

✔️ No worries!
➕ We challenge you to pick 1 routine task this week where AI can help,

To those who respond "A few times a week," it says:

👏 Great!

That also appears to be the focus of Arist's CEO Michael Ioffe. "What we found in early data is that the course very, very meaningfully increases AI usage," he said at a conference in late March, where he appeared on stage with Stockton.