This week, the nonprofit Moms First introduced a free AI-powered chatbot designed to help workers navigate the complex patchwork of state laws governing paid family leave in the U.S. The tool, PaidLeave.AI, is currently being piloted in New York, but Moms First founder Reshma Saujani envisions rolling it out across the 13 states that currently offer paid leave, as well as Washington, D.C.
“When I talk to moms, they’re like, ‘Oh my god, this website is so annoying; I can’t figure out whether I’m eligible or not—forget it,’” Saujani says. “Or they put it off, and then they can lose [thousands of dollars] in wages.”
Saujani believes PaidLeave.AI can help demystify the application process for workers, from determining their eligibility for paid leave to creating an action plan for submitting their claim. The tool also provides a space for asking questions that they might be afraid to bring to an HR department—or at the very least, empowers them with information before they meet with HR. But beyond directly assisting workers, Saujani sees PaidLeave.AI as a crucial tool for employers and HR teams that are frequently fielding questions from employees. “We’ve heard stories of [PaidLeave.AI] making its way through company Slack channels, touting the potential,” she says.
Moms First already partners with 150 employers as part of its National Business Coalition for Child Care, whose members include Patagonia, Morgan Stanley, and PayPal. And in 2024, Saujani says, the organization will host workshops to train employers on how to use PaidLeave.AI. “We want to ease the burden on employers supporting their working parents and helping them navigate through the benefits,” she says.
PaidLeave.AI grew out of an idea that Moms First founder Reshma Saujani pitched to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who then connected her with the team at Novy.ai, which developed the chatbot. (The project was also supported by Craig Newmark Philanthropies.) Saujani, who was previously the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, also saw an opportunity to harness generative AI for good, amid observers raising ethical concerns and sounding the alarm on the technology’s limitations.
“I’m the founder of Girls Who Code, so I’m obsessed with technology [and] how technology can be a great equalizer,” she says. “And I have one thing on my mind these days, which is paid leave and childcare. As I’ve sat in conversations about AI, it’s often: Is the world going to end? How do we stop kids from cheating on exams? Well, the technology is here—so how do we really use it for good?” (As for concerns about the accuracy of PaidLeave.AI, Saujani says the custom AI behind it has been trained to read New York State’s paid family leave site, which “makes for a much safer and accurate data set”; the tool also provides links and documentation to support its responses.)
In building PaidLeave.AI, Saujani was also thinking about how the tool could boost overall utilization of state-level benefits and help bolster the case for federal paid leave legislation—a policy change that lawmakers have failed to advance despite the momentum from the pandemic.
“The underutilization of benefits, [whether it’s] paid leave or the child tax credit, is often an excuse for political leaders to cut them or to not expand them,” she says. “So utilization matters, and not just for poor, low-income, single mothers who need it; if we’re ever going to get federal paid leave, [we] actually need to increase the utilization of benefits.” In New York, the utilization rate of paid leave has increased steadily since it was first rolled out in 2018—with more than 163,000 claims filed last year, a record high—but that still amounts to little more than 2% of eligible workers. Saujani is betting PaidLeave.AI can help bridge the gap. “What I want to prove, essentially, is that generative AI can help increase [the number of] claims,” she says. “I want to know what the difference is with this tool.”
The response so far has been encouraging, Saujani says. In just a matter of days, she has seen many HR professionals sharing PaidLeave.AI with their peers and has already heard from three governors who expressed interest in bringing the tool to their states. Also, she’s seeing early signs that a tool like PaidLeave.AI could expose more women to generative AI and, perhaps, invite other social entrepreneurs into a space that has largely excluded women and underrepresented groups. “We know that women and people of color want to work on issues that are going to make the world better,” she says. “So, we’re kind of changing the narrative.”
