Storm Lake should turn AI time savings into coached responsibility

Storm Lake’s workforce ecosystem already values learning by doing. Buena Vista University’s downtown Foundry connects students, entrepreneurs and businesses through mentoring and real projects, while regional employers bring students into hands-on career exploration.

Stanford’s August 12 employment update raises the next question: what happens after a young person gets hired? Using ADP payroll data through June 2026, it found employment among U.S. workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations. The gap appears mainly through reduced hiring.

Local employers should use AI to compress routine preparation without compressing the learning path. Let software draft the memo or summarize the file. Make the junior employee verify the claims, call the customer, investigate the exception and explain a recommendation to an experienced reviewer.

Then measure time to independent competence: how quickly can a new hire catch a bad output, handle an unfamiliar case and know when to escalate?

Storm Lake can make AI an apprenticeship accelerator. The first job should still create the judgment the next promotion requires.

Gleb Tsipursky, PhD, is 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).