
State, Businesses See Urgent Need to Embrace Artificial Intelligence Training
June 3, 2025
(MACKINAC ISLAND) – A report released by the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) during the 2025 Mackinac Policy Conference showed the need for training a workforce to use artificial intelligence as industries change around the state.
LEO Director Susan Corbin stated that over the next five to 10 years there could be up to 2.8 million jobs across the state affected in some way by AI, and state and business leaders confirmed that the technology was already shaping their workforce.
“These changes are here to stay. I was hoping that I could coast out this next year and a half and not think about AI, but I told my team we can’t do that. In fact, we are going to see more and more of this in every facet of our personal and professional lives,” Corbin said.
She said the AI and Michigan Workforce report was an addendum to the state’s workforce plan released close to the 2024 policy conference, and it would focus on three policies, including helping develop the technical skills needed in the workforce to use AI in an AI-centric economy.
The plan also concerns helping those workers already in the workforce get the knowledge they need to be successful as AI changes the work being done.
“We want to make sure nobody is left behind in this position and enabling businesses to adapt to the AI economy by ensuring small and medium-sized businesses can adopt and benefit from AI,” she said.
The last section, she said, was to help bring AI research to Michigan and link that research to businesses and the workforce throughout the state.
She made a call to embrace AI to help make the state successful.
“Now is the time for all of us, across government, education, business, workforce, and community organizations to work together and identify opportunities to invest in our workforce and needs of tomorrow,” Corbin said.
Michigan Economic Development Corporation CEO Quentin Messer Jr. said there was a need to make sure the students were learning how to utilize the new technology, but he said there was also the need to look at how it would impact the current workforce.
“We want to make sure that as technology reduces and changes the nature of work and eliminates the need for people to do rote jobs, that they can move to higher-functioning, more intellectually stimulating and demanding, and higher-paying jobs,” Messer said.
He said the AI race was global.
Small Business Association President Brian Calley called the use of AI an “urgent issue” and said it was set to transform every aspect of every job.
“What we don’t want to do is be flat-footed and find ourselves experiencing all the downsides without catching the upsides. That’s really the trick here,” Calley said.
BAMF Health CEO Anthony Chang said AI was incredibly important to the industry of radiopharmaceuticals that he was helping to pioneer at his business headquartered in Grand Rapids.
The business uses radioactive drugs to create scans of the body’s internal organs that help doctors diagnose diseases like cancer.
He said with their current infrastructure they needed to add millions of scans to meet the growing demand.
Chang said the technology his business needed radiologists with an understanding of AI to make the process efficient and quick.
“What we are trying to solve over here is how to scale up this kind of technology and how to make it accessible, affordable and as soon as possible to the people,” he said.
It wasn’t just the high-tech business community that showed changes needed by the workforce, Michigan Department of Transportation Director Brad Wieferich said the possibilities of AI on engineering were going to be immense.
He said computer-aided design, or CAD, automation was changing how work plans for road designs were being used and delivered and pointed to a pilot project that used project data to create plan for the Rouge River Bridge on Interstate 696.
“We didn’t have plan sheets. We literally delivered an electronic model of the structure that we want to build to the contractor, and they used that model to be able to piece things together,” Wieferich said.
He said AI programs have been used for grading to change road profiles or widen existing roads and to create different layers of rock they needed to deal with. With AI tools the business of creating roads has also changed he said.
“They literally have GPS units mounted on the machines with the information fed into them to be able to drive them down the roadways and they know in the XYZ coordinates where they are so they’re meeting the plan requirements,” he said.
Where he was used to spreading out the sheets on the hood of the work truck, the younger generations were gravitating toward the technologies utilizing AI.
“They are expecting that this technology is going to be there. We’re going to have to make sure that the market also evolves with the tools that are going to be needed to actually consume and use that data now,” he said.
Article courtesy MIRS News for SBAM’s Lansing Watchdog newsletter
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