How Salesforce Is Closing the AI Skills Gap

Ente: Salesforce.org

Paese: US

Descrizione

0% Key Takeaways Workforce readiness starts in the classroom. AI literacy needs to be embedded across K–12, career education, and higher education so that it becomes a foundational workplace skill. Public-private partnership is essential. Governments bring policy frameworks and public trust; the private sector brings technical expertise and scalable platforms. Salesforce is endorsing the Economy of the Future Commission Act. This bipartisan legislation would establish a cross-sector commission to evaluate AI’s impact on employment and education. This May, we brought together principals from San Francisco and Oakland middle schools , along with Salesforce executives and leaders from local nonprofit organizations, at Salesforce Tower for a summit celebrating the importance of supporting public education, deepening partnership and learning with school leaders, and navigating the path forward for education in the AI era. The conversations that emerged made clear just how much is at stake as schools try to adopt AI responsibly. The questions they’re wrestling with aren’t unique to education, though. They’re the same ones facing employers, workers, and public institutions across every sector of the economy. No longer the domain of technical teams, AI is reshaping how work gets done across customer service, healthcare, education, government, sales, operations, HR, and communications, and no sector can navigate that shift alone. Education sits at the intersection of this transition, which is why we at Salesforce invest in education and workforce readiness as deliberately as we invest in technology. We want to ensure that students, educators, and the institutions that support them are equipped for what comes next. That’s why Salesforce is endorsing the bipartisan Economy of the Future Commission Act , which would establish a cross-sector commission to evaluate AI’s impact on employment, education, and long-term U.S. economic competitiveness. Within seven months of enactment, the commission would publish an interim report on expected workforce changes. Within 13 months, it would deliver actionable legislative recommendations spanning AI education, reskilling, career and technical training, and strategies for maintaining U.S. global leadership in the AI era. The bill reflects a reality that we see every day in our work with government agencies and school systems: Workforce readiness is at the heart of responsible AI policy. Workforce skilling starts in the classroom Preparing people for an AI-powered economy starts long before someone enters the labor market. AI fluency should be thoughtfully embedded across K–12, career training, and higher education so that it becomes a foundational skill. In enterprise settings, employees are able to iterate and experiment with new technologies. But classrooms are high-stakes environments, where the cost of ineffective tools or approaches can directly affect student learning, career readiness, and long-term opportunity. The federal and state agencies making real progress are the ones that treat AI readiness holistically, combining trusted data, responsible governance, secure implementation, and workforce enablement. Educators are deeply committed to helping young people succeed but are often stretched thin in their capacity by administrative burden. AI can help teachers who are understaffed and underresourced, and it’s already helping identify individual student learning gaps to deliver targeted practice. For example, through Salesforce Accelerator — Agents for Impact , AI agents can help with everything from developing tailored skills-building programs to offering personalized coaching that supports students through the college application process. At the same time, hands-on AI literacy workshops help young people learn how to think critically about data security, hallucinations, and plagiarism. This is also where the same guardrails that guide Salesforce products are especially important in schools — transparency, audit trails, hallucination reduction, and human-centered decisions. We believe AI should be adopted at schools in ethical and responsible ways to genuinely serve and protect students. We also aim to support this progress by equipping educators with practical, accessible resources. Through our Principal Innovation Fund, now more than a decade strong in partnership with San Francisco and Oakland unified school districts, each middle school principal receives