August 26, 2026
By guest Contributor Gleb Tsipursky, PhD, a behavioral scientist, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, and author of The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results (Georgetown University Press, 2026). https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/aibook
Fairfield County’s current workforce action plan lists 870 Pickerington Local Schools seniors among students eligible for enhanced pre-apprenticeship programs. That is the right model for skilled trades. Pickerington should now extend apprenticeship thinking to AI-exposed office and professional work.
The latest Stanford Digital Economy Lab analysis finds that employment among U.S. workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations is about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations, up from 15% in the July 2025 data vintage. The shift is occurring mainly through reduced hiring.
Digital pre-apprenticeships should not be classes in prompting. Students should use AI to prepare a first draft, then verify it against evidence, find the exception, explain the risk and make a supervised recommendation. Local employers can provide short projects that expose students to the judgment behind accounting, customer service, marketing, logistics and other AI-changing roles.
The key metric is how fast a learner becomes capable of handling a real decision independently. Pickerington already understands the value of earning skill through practice. AI makes that principle urgent across more careers.