The Future of Work with GitLab Foundation
At GitLab Foundation, we concentrate our investments in key thesis areas to maximize efficiency and positive outcomes in our grantmaking. We believe these key thesis areas have the potential to deliver outsized outcomes based on our North Star goal.
One of these key thesis areas is the future of work and, specifically, driving greater economic opportunity in the future of work by leveraging emerging technologies. GitLab Foundation is not the first or the only foundation to focus on and invest in the future of work but we bring a unique perspective and approach.
Hear from the foundation’s CEO, Ellie Bertani; senior program officer, Matt Zieger, who leads the foundation’s future of work portfolio; and Spencer MacColl, director of impact measurement and analytics; about the “why” behind this thesis area and progress to date.
Why did the foundation choose the future of work as one of its main thesis areas?
Ellie Bertani: The future of work can mean a lot of things to different organizations. For us, it describes the numerous ways in which cultural and technological change has the promise to increase possibilities for people to increase their incomes and, ultimately, empower them with choices to live a better life.
We chose this as a thesis area because breakthrough technologies and cultural trends need intentional investment to shape them for positive good. Innovative technologies have the power to drive benefits in highly cost-effective, scalable ways that directly lead to economic opportunities for individuals.
Just look at our current grantees to see the impact that is possible: Digital Green is helping low-income farmers in Kenya learn how to select, grow, harvest, and get the best price for their crops, in order to double their incomes for only $1 of technology investment. Immigration Policy Lab is developing technology to match hundreds of thousands of incoming refugees to communities where they are most likely to thrive. mRelief is creating a near-instantaneous verification process to increase access to SNAP benefits for people in need.
How does the GitLab Foundation envision the future of work, and what role will emerging technologies play in shaping it?
Matt Zieger: It all comes down to access. We believe that technology is enabling a future of work with fewer barriers to accessing opportunity.
Our grantees’ innovations showcase how emerging technology can be leveraged to break down historic barriers to opportunities, particularly for historically marginalized populations. Partners like CFK Africa and Generation enable access to world-class educational content in communities across Nairobi through satellite broadband and low-cost devices, Human-I-T and Laboratoria enhance economic mobility by empowering underserved individuals through access to digital skills and careers in technology. CareerVillage is launching Coach, a widely accessible, AI-enabled personalized mentor and career coach.
We see the transformative power of AI to unlock and democratize access to data and information in ways that we are confident can improve economic opportunity.
What have been some key learnings from grants to date that have shaped the foundation’s understanding of the future of work?
Spencer MacColl: Even though we launched this strategy less than a year ago, we have gained early insights. We recognized that job seekers need new tools to navigate a changing labor market. Many of these new tools have the potential to impact more than 50,000 people per project.
For example, Humanitas Labs is optimizing how the nation’s 211 system provides referral information to potentially hundreds of thousands of people. Humanitas and other organizations are shaping how people gain access to information about employment opportunities, career planning, finances and public benefits. And they are accomplishing it at a relatively low cost per person impacted.
We have heard that users may be wary of new digital solutions to help them navigate economic opportunities and solutions. To mitigate this, our grantees realized that it is important to incorporate human-to-human interactions into their tech solutions.
Looking again at Humanitas Labs, they do not intend for individuals to use their 211 navigation tool alone, but rather for 211 operators to use it to improve their ability to diagnose, triage and make referrals quicker. Similarly, DataKind — which developed an app to help customers of a Colombian bank get tailored recommendations to improve their financial health — recognized that an app alone will not create behavior change. They have ensured that the bank’s field agents are trained to support customers alongside the app.
What steps do the foundation and its grantees take to ensure that AI applications are ethical and beneficial in creating a more equitable future of work?
Matt Zieger: We take a learning-by-doing approach by helping our grantees prototype promising applications and build evidence about what is working and what is not. This is key to both upholding ethical standards and ensuring equitable distribution of the benefits of these technologies.
GitLab Foundation specifically seeks out organizations and teams with a demonstrated knowledge of the people and communities they serve. We look for a history of outcomes that show success in driving economic opportunity for target populations.
Lastly, we foster a cohort-based community for grantees that helps elevate best practices and solve challenges. We encourage peer-led feedback and resource sharing. We bring in leading experts on AI trust, safety and ethics to help our grantees as they develop their projects — OpenAI, Tribe.AI and Project Evident have been key partners in helping to facilitate and support these efforts.
Data accessibility and quality can be hard to maintain on projects focused on the future of work. How do you work around data limitations to measure impact?
Spencer MacColl: A lot of the solutions among GitLab Foundation’s future of work grants have a digital component. These include mRelief’s user-facing app to connect to public benefits, Digital Green’s chatbot to learn about best practices in agriculture or EdTech for Learning’s job application portal where jobseekers can learn about which opportunities most closely match their skill sets.
These digital platforms provide quick feedback on user behavior which is helpful for improving the app design but the key challenge is linking online behavior to real-world outcomes. There are three common approaches to access impact data.
Conduct phone interviews with a representative sample of digital users which may include consulting with an impact measurement company like 60 Decibels.
Create automated online surveys for users to complete and their self-reported impact outcomes.
Tap into existing administrative datasets such as unemployment insurance and employment and income tax records to verify financial impacts.
How do recent market trends influence the foundation’s approach to shaping the future of work?
Ellie Bertani: No one can reliably predict the future. In order to best navigate through uncertainty, we prefer to work with partners rather than go it alone. Initiatives like our AI Funder Roundtable bring together funders to learn from each other, share perspectives, debate where to invest for the highest impact and keep abreast of the latest news. Collaboration continues to be a core value that grounds our work.
In terms of technology itself, there has been a lot of focus and excitement around tools and products in the AI space. However, we have come to recognize that these tools’ back-end data is just as — if not more — important than the tools themselves. If the data informing an AI tool is biased or incomplete or un-validated, then the tool itself isn’t very useful. That is starting to really influence how we think about emerging technology and the future of work and how we move forward. You will likely see us start to invest in un-sexy back-end infrastructure and data systems in order to ensure that the full value of technologies like AI can be realized.
To learn more about GitLab Foundation’s future of work thesis area, check out our handbook. To learn more about our future of work grantees, visit our website. And if you have a high-potential project or idea to use emerging technology to increase economic opportunity, apply to round two of the AI for Economic Fund here.
