Preparing an AI-Ready Workforce Is a Shared Responsibility

Tracy Judge, CEO & Founder, Soundings

For decades, workforce development has followed a familiar pattern.

Universities prepared students. Employers hired graduates. Then organizations taught people what they really needed to know to succeed in their roles.

That model was already beginning to change. AI is accelerating the shift.

Technology is evolving too quickly for educators, employers, government, or industry associations to prepare people in isolation. The skills people need are changing in real time, often faster than traditional curricula, job descriptions, and professional development programs can keep pace.

Preparing people for an AI-enabled future has become a shared responsibility.

That is what makes the work happening through the California State University AI Workforce Acceleration Board so important.

When I joined the Board, I expected many of our conversations to focus on technology. Instead, the conversations have consistently come back to people.

How do we ensure students graduate ready for work that is still evolving?

How do we help faculty integrate AI while preserving critical thinking?

How can employers provide meaningful experience before students enter the workforce full-time?

And how do we create opportunities for people across disciplines (not only those studying technology) to build the confidence and judgment needed to work alongside AI?

These are not technology questions alone. They are workforce questions.

Bringing the Right People Into the Same Room

The CSU initiative emerged after California employers raised concerns that graduates were not developing the skills needed for an increasingly AI-enabled economy.

Rather than trying to solve that challenge within higher education alone, CSU created a collaborative, system-wide approach. The Board brings together senior leaders from organizations including OpenAI, IBM, Adobe, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon Web Services and Intel, alongside faculty, students, alumni and representatives from the California Governor’s Office.

The organizations represented around the table immediately establish the scale and credibility of the effort. But the diversity of perspectives matters just as much as the names.

• Technology leaders can share where capabilities are advancing.

• Employers can explain how roles and expectations are changing.

• Faculty can help determine how those capabilities should be taught thoughtfully.

• Students can speak directly to what they are experiencing in classrooms and workplaces.

• Government can help connect these efforts to broader economic and workforce priorities.

This is not a group coming together to promote AI adoption for its own sake. It is a group working to define what meaningful workforce preparation should look like as AI becomes part of nearly every field.

In fact, several participating companies noted that they had rarely been invited into this kind of direct collaboration with an entire university system. Instead of standing outside higher education and expressing concern about workforce readiness, employers are being asked to help design the solution.

That is an important shift.

The Gap Between the Classroom and the Workplace

One of the most revealing conversations has centered on the mixed messages students are receiving.

Some students are being told that using AI in the classroom is inappropriate or even dishonest. At the same time, many are entering internships and jobs where the ability to use AI is already expected.

In one CSU classroom, approximately half of the working students said they were required to use AI in their current jobs.

I recently saw the same disconnect within my own company.

We hired an intern from San Diego State University and asked her to help create a custom GPT for a workflow we wanted to automate. She shared that only a year earlier, students had been told that using AI was cheating. Now, they were being asked to use it.

That is how quickly the expectations are changing.

The answer is not simply to encourage unrestricted use or to dismiss valid concerns about accuracy, ethics and critical thinking. The opportunity is to teach people how to use these tools with intention and judgment.

Incoming students are already using AI. CSU’s own research found that 80% had used AI tools before arriving on campus. At that point, the choice is no longer whether the technology should exist within education. The choice is whether educators participate in shaping how it is used.

Education should not be expected to react after the workforce has already changed.

It should help lead that change.

AI Is a People Initiative

At Soundings, our work has led us to a similar conclusion.

We initially began researching AI because we wanted to understand what it would mean for our freelancers, our clients and the future of agile teams. Very quickly, we realized that the conversation was much bigger than tools and automation.

AI changes how work is distributed.

It changes what certain roles require.

It changes how teams are structured and where new expertise is needed.

It may even begin to function like another member of the team – supporting certain tasks, expanding capacity, and forcing leaders to think differently about what work should be done by whom.

That means we can no longer talk about workforce strategy without addressing AI. But we also cannot talk about AI without addressing the workforce.

Through our AI Impact research and industry conversations, we have seen that adoption is deeply personal.

Some people are excited.

Some are overwhelmed.

Some worry about what AI means for their careers.

Others are already experimenting and want to move faster.

An organization can purchase the same tools for everyone, but that does not mean everyone will begin from the same place or respond in the same way.

Real transformation starts with understanding people: what they know, how they feel, what support they need and how their work may change.

That is why AI adoption should be approached like any other significant organizational change. It requires communication, education, opportunities to practice and a clear connection between the technology and the work people are actually trying to accomplish.

From Career Readiness to Real Experience

One of the elements of the CSU initiative that excites me most is its focus on applied learning.

Career readiness cannot be built through theory alone. Students need opportunities to work on real problems, use emerging tools and experience how work happens inside organizations.

CSU is exploring that through micro-internships: short, paid, project-based engagements that allow students to complete meaningful work for an employer without requiring the commitment of a traditional semester-long internship.

A student might spend a few weeks developing a campaign, improving a workflow, researching an opportunity or building an AI-supported solution. The employer receives useful project work. The student gains experience, confidence, professional connections and tangible proof of what they can do.

This model aligns closely with how work itself is evolving.

Organizations are increasingly breaking larger initiatives into defined projects, assembling specialized talent around specific needs and creating more flexible pathways into their teams. Micro-internships give students experience within that reality while giving employers a lower-risk way to discover emerging talent.

The value can extend well beyond one assignment. When someone does excellent work, there is often another phase, another project or another opportunity to continue the relationship.

For industries such as hospitality and business events, this could be especially powerful.

Our industry needs people with expertise in technology, analytics, marketing, design, operations and many other disciplines. The solution is not only to add more technology courses to hospitality programs. We also need to help students in business, technology and creative programs see hospitality and events as places where their skills can have an impact.

Applied, project-based experiences can help build those bridges.

A Model for Industry Collaboration

The CSU initiative offers a valuable model beyond higher education.

The business events industry is also trying to understand how AI will reshape roles, skills, workflows and staffing models. No single company, association, technology provider or educational institution has the full answer.

We need more shared learning across the industry.

That means bringing together planners, agencies, suppliers, destinations, educators, technology partners and working professionals. It means using research to understand where people are today, creating practical opportunities to build skills and continuing to adapt as the work evolves.

It also means recognizing that workforce transformation is not owned by one department or institution.

Universities cannot solve it alone.

Employers cannot wait until someone is hired to begin preparing them.

Industry associations cannot build relevant education without listening to the people doing the work.

Technology companies cannot determine how their tools should be applied without understanding the human and organizational context.

The momentum comes from putting those perspectives together.

For me, that is what makes serving on the CSU AI Workforce Acceleration Board so meaningful. It provides an opportunity to contribute what we are learning through Soundings, bring the perspective of the hospitality and business events workforce into a broader conversation, and translate insights from other sectors back into practical action for our industry.

AI may be the catalyst, but the real work is about people.

It is about preparing students for changing careers, helping professionals continue to grow, giving employers new ways to engage emerging talent and designing teams that can adapt as technology evolves.

That future will not be built by education, government or industry working separately.

It will be built together.