HHS Can Carry AI Literacy Into Paid Work Experience

To the Editor:

As Maci Ober of HopNews has reported, Hopkinton High School is building clearer rules and AI literacy around responsible use. Massachusetts is also funding paid AI internships for 400 public high school students, pairing students with industry mentors and real projects.

Stanford Digital Economy Lab found that the employment shortfall for U.S. workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations reached about 19% by June 2026.

Hopkinton employers should create a first-project guarantee. If AI eliminates routine preparation, every junior worker should still receive a real, supervised project that requires checking outputs, explaining choices, and owning a recommendation.

Schools can teach AI literacy. Workplaces must turn that literacy into judgment. Employers should measure how quickly new hires progress from assisted work to independent decisions and use AI savings to fund the mentor time that gets them there.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., is a behavioral scientist, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, and author of The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results, published by Georgetown University Press. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, the Toronto Star, and other publications.