As a workforce funder, we know AI is already dramatically changing work and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We also know that workforce practitioners will be evolving all aspects of their efforts to prepare people for careers. Providers will help participants strengthen the durable skills which will be ever more important in the future, understand the responsible use of AI tools, and train people for the new roles and evolved occupations which emerge.
But how will they make these important changes, and when?
We know answering these questions requires workforce providers to deeply consider their approaches, connect actively to employers, and maintain flexibility. Answers will also require confidence, understanding and knowledge about AI and how its use is evolving, and this is where we come in.
While we are far from AI experts, we believe one role we can play is to help our workforce development community grow in its confidence in using and understanding it. We will be:
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- Regularly convening a roundtable of practitioners to share learnings from AI pilots, identify areas for further learning, and continue to expand AI usage across relevant use cases which benefit job seekers, employers, and workforce organizations themselves
- Learning as much as possible and sharing relevant articles from actual experts in an “AI Corner” feature in our email newsletter (feel free to send me links to articles you believe are helpful and relevant!) Similarly, when warranted, we’ll devote more time and space to highlighting new tools or other relevant learnings in our blogs or email newsletter articles. (sign up for our email here.)
- Using AI ourselves at the foundation, from the obvious ways to trying new and different applications, making ourselves a learning lab and contributing with empathy to the learning community we’re in.
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Our hope is that our practitioner partners leverage these resources and discussions (along with all they are doing independently) into the confident, creative thinking which leads to pilots, prototypes, new uses, and evolved programming.
As AI changes, and its use among our practitioner and employer community changes, our strategy may change too. We’ll keep you posted.