We Want to Hear from You: How Can AI Help Workers Prepare, Adapt, and Thrive

Artificial intelligence is changing work quickly. It is reshaping the skills employers need, the tools workers use, and the ways people search for jobs, build careers, and adapt when their industries change.

But the impact of AI on workers will depend on more than the technology itself. It will also depend on whether people can access the training they need, find and navigate new opportunities, get support while in their jobs and during career transitions, and overcome the practical barriers that can stand between them and a good job.

Across the workforce field, organizations are already experimenting with AI to address these challenges. Some are using it to personalize training or career guidance. Others are exploring new approaches to job matching, worker supports, and service delivery. What we need now is stronger evidence about where these approaches are helping, for whom, and under what conditions and better lesson sharing from evidence in real time.

That is why AIR is launching a Request for Information (RFI) on Building an Evidence Network for Artificial Intelligence in Workforce Systems. We are inviting workforce organizations, education and training providers, employers, public agencies, technology providers, and others to share promising AI-enabled approaches that could help advance work readiness, worker resiliency, and worker prosperity.

This is an early, open call. Ideas can range from concepts and prototypes to pilots and solutions already in use. We want to understand what is emerging across the field and identify opportunities to learn together about what works.

The framework below illustrates some of the supports workers and learners may need to prepare for, enter, and advance in quality jobs. These areas also help frame what we hope to learn through this RFI.

Figure 1. Critical Components for Supporting Economic Mobility and Resiliency

Source: Adapted from Amin, Goger, and Yancey, 2025.

What We're Looking For

A strong submission does not need to be a polished grant proposal. We are most interested in practical ideas, emerging lessons, and opportunities for research and partnership.

Responses may focus on one or more of four areas:

• Skill Training and Development
  How can AI help young people prepare for careers and help workers build new skills, reskill, or adapt as jobs change?
  
• Career Navigation and Job Placement
  How can AI improve access to labor market information, job search support, career guidance, and connections to employers?
  
• Basic Needs
  How might AI make it easier for workers and learners to navigate benefits, services, and other supports that help make training and employment possible?
  
• Personalized Support
  How can AI strengthen outreach, mentorship, peer support, and other forms of individualized assistance during career entry and transitions?

Across all four areas, we are especially interested in approaches that begin with meaningful workforce challenges rather than technology for technology's sake. We want to learn how AI can complement the people and systems already helping workers succeed, and how workers and learners themselves can help shape these tools and the questions we ask about them.

We also want to understand what responsible use looks like in practice, including how organizations address fairness, bias, transparency, privacy, and governance.

How to Submit

Information Due: October 2, 2026, at 12:00 p.m. ET
RFI Details:Download PDF
Submit Here:Submittable
Questions:Email Us

AIR welcomes responses from organizations at any stage of AI adoption, from an early concept to an operational solution. You do not need an existing relationship with AIR to participate.

What Happens After You Submit

A review committee of external researchers and practitioners and AIR staff will review submissions. Respondents will be notified the week of October 26, 2026, whether their project has been selected to advance to a subsequent RFP phase. AIR may also follow up with respondents to explore ideas, partnership opportunities, or future work outside of that process.

Ultimately, this RFI is about building a stronger evidence base for a question the workforce field cannot afford to answer by guesswork: How can we use AI in ways that genuinely help people prepare for, find, and thrive in good jobs?

There is a lot we still need to learn. We hope the organizations closest to this work will help us do it. Share what you are trying, what you are learning, and what you think the field needs to understand next.