Axios

WASHINGTON – STEM education may not be as valuable as it once was because of AI's ability to code on its own, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said at an Axios Live event.

The big picture: AI is reshaping every industry and is directly tied to economic growth, increasing pressure on schools and employers to equip the workforce with AI tools and skills.

Axios' Courtenay Brown and Ashley Gold hosted conversations with Young and Anne Kress, president of Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA). The May 12 event was sponsored by Amazon.

What they're saying: "Having a certain command of ideas and being able to translate those novel ideas into language that can be sent into the algorithm and having the ability, with precision, to tell an algorithm what you need, describe your circumstances, describe the end state you're trying to arrive at, will be incredibly valuable," Young said.

Zoom in: Enrollment trends are shifting as students rethink which industries will remain resilient in the AI era.

• "I heard somebody say once, 'if you're in a profession where you're fixing things or fixing people, you're probably on a good path,'" Kress said.
• NOVA has seen a decline in students in computer science, but a major uptick in health care, trades and education, she added.
• "Students who come out ready to learn how to learn, to continually skill, re-skill, up-skill, cross-skill, they're going to be fine."

Content from the sponsor's segment:

In a View From the Top conversation, Holly Sullivan, vice president of worldwide economic development policy at Amazon, said AI should be viewed as a tool that will augment, rather than replace, how people work.

• "It's about upskilling everyone to be able to not only utilize but deploy and understand AI," she said.
• "We've had robotics in our facilities for many years … so we have evidence that AI and robotics do not replace people. They make people safer. They provide efficiencies and increase productivity."

Pope Leo XIV is expected to sign his first encyclical later this month, positioning artificial intelligence as the defining moral and labor challenge of a new industrial revolution.

Why it matters: The document, reportedly titled "Magnifica Humanitas" ("magnificent humanity"), would become the Catholic Church's clearest attempt yet to place human dignity, labor rights and ethics at the center of the AI race.

Anthropic is launching a new package for small businesses, betting that mom and pop shops, solo entrepreneurs and lean teams are the next big market for AI agents.

Why it matters: After spending years chasing enterprise contracts and consumer adoption, AI labs are now racing to win over small businesses — a challenging and largely untapped market defined by limited staffs and little time to experiment.

Semiconductors, or chips, are again turning out to be the It Girl of the global economy.

Why it matters: Chips are essential to the AI build-out, and that's driving a huge burst of demand, creating supply shortages, pushing up prices and creating an investment frenzy.

• It also puts chips at the center of geopolitics.

General Dynamics Information Technology and NightDragon have teamed up and are on Wednesday making public their plans to accelerate U.S. government adoption of commercial and emerging tech.

Why it matters: Trump 2.0 is seeking new suppliers for the Pentagon and rewriting how the military does business.

• Symbiotic relationships between traditional primes and smaller, venture-backed startups are emerging — and appear to be bearing fruit.