How AI could help families get paid leave benefits

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries without a national paid family leave program. As a result, offering those benefits has been left up to individual states and employers. Thirteen states and Washington, D.C., currently offer paid family leave programs, but they’re not always easy to navigate. Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Moms First, says this complicated system means workers lose an average of $10,000 in wages by taking that leave without being paid. That’s why her organization released an AI chatbot to help people in New York navigate their state’s paid leave program.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The next frontier for AI, cutting the red tape for paid family leave.
0:06.0	From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Lily Dromali. Somali.
0:15.0	The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries without a national paid family leave program.
0:26.0	Offering those benefits has been left up to individual states and employers.
0:31.0	Thirteen states, plus D.C DC offer paid leave programs, but they are not always easy to
0:37.1	navigate.
0:39.1	Girls who code founder Reshma Sadhani says our complicated patchwork system means workers lose an
0:44.9	average of $10,000 in wages by instead taking that leave unpaid.
0:50.4	Sojani recently founded Mom's First, which is out with an AI tool called paid leave.
0:55.9	AI to help people in New York navigate the system in their state.
1:00.6	So if you're lucky to live in New York, you have paid leave, but it's still an
1:04.2	uphill battle to climb. The government website doesn't do a great job at customer service,
1:10.9	right? It makes it hard for you to know whether you're eligible for
1:14.0	benefits and to know how much you are eligible for. And for the average woman in
1:18.4	New York, she can't just walk into her boss's office and ask for help, because
1:22.4	oftentimes when your boss
1:23.9	finds out you're pregnant you're fired and many moms in New York you know that need
1:27.7	these benefits are in low-wage jobs and so they don't know who to ask to get
1:32.0	the answers that they need.
1:33.4	And I'm hoping that paid leave. AI will help with that.
1:38.2	Yeah, tell me about how this tool would solve some of the issues that you're laying out?
1:45.0	Yeah, so mom's first launched paidleaf. AI with early support from open AI,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.