OPINION: Staten Island Can Turn AI Training Into Paid Judgment Practice – Survey Underway By Local Workforce Groups, Universities On Community Needs

Staten Island employers are being asked what skills and training the borough’s next workforce needs, while New York City is investing in AI career pathways and local tech work-based learning. Stanford’s newest payroll evidence makes the design question urgent: hiring is falling behind for young workers in highly AI-exposed occupations. I argue that Staten Island should pair AI training with paid practice in verification, exceptions, and supervised decisions so technology strengthens the first rung of the local career ladder.

 

See this author’s previous contribution here.

 

 

STATEN ISLAND SHOULD TURN AI TRAINING INTO PAID JUDGMENT PRACTICE

Staten Island is asking the right workforce question: what skills will local employers need next? The answer should include something more demanding than AI fluency.

The Staten Island Economic Development Corporation, the College of Staten Island, and Wagner College are currently running a borough-wide workforce survey focused on the skills, training, and talent local businesses need across logistics, manufacturing, health care, technology, and other sectors. At the same time, New York City is expanding AI-related career pathways. The city’s CUNY Tech Futures initiative is investing $5.3 million in AI and emerging-technology programs designed to reach more than 2,500 students per year across 12 campuses.

That investment should be paired with a second goal: preserve and improve the first work experiences that turn students into trusted professionals.

The Stanford Digital Economy Lab’s August payroll update shows why. Among U.S. workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations, employment is about 19 percent below where it would be if it had kept pace with similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations. The same measure was 15 percent in the July 2025 data vintage. The adjustment appears mainly through reduced hiring of young workers, while experienced workers show no comparable gap.

AI can eliminate routine preparation. Staten Island should make sure it does not eliminate the practice hidden inside that preparation.

A new logistics employee learns by tracing why a shipment exception occurred. A junior health-care administrator learns by comparing a routine case with one that demands escalation. A beginning analyst learns by checking source data before making a recommendation. A young employee in a small business learns how customer needs differ from the neat categories in a template.

If AI produces the first draft, summary, or calculation, the beginner should move sooner into checking, explaining, and deciding.

That principle belongs in internships, employer partnerships, and Workforce1 programs. The city already operates two Workforce1 centers on Staten Island, while its Tech Talent Pipeline offers on-the-job experience connecting CUNY students, including College of Staten Island students, with local employers. Those programs provide a ready infrastructure for an AI-era judgment apprenticeship.

Employers participating in career programs should define a progression for each junior role: observe the workflow, verify AI-supported output, handle a bounded exception, explain the reasoning, make a supervised decision, and then own routine decisions independently.

Managers should be measured on the progression, not only on output. How long does it take a new hire to spot a bad assumption? How often does the person escalate the right case? How much rework is required? When can that employee handle a recurring decision without intervention?

Those measures matter especially for smaller businesses, where every experienced employee carries knowledge that is hard to replace. AI should help capture and transfer that knowledge by creating time for coaching and case review.

Staten Island does not need to choose between faster adoption and stronger local careers. It can use AI to automate routine preparation while making paid work experience more demanding, more educational, and more valuable.

The borough’s workforce future will be stronger if AI shortens the distance from beginner to trusted professional instead of removing the beginner from the path.

 

Banner Image: AI Chatbots. Image Credit – Salvador Rios