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As AI Changes Work, Massachusetts Students Will Explore What It Means for People

Business Wire

October 24 Human Edge Studio, convened by Strategic Growth & Innovation at WPI, will connect interdisciplinary learning, workforce research and industry expertise, with selected student findings advancing to the Massachusetts State House.

WORCESTER, Mass., October 19, 2026--Artificial intelligence is changing how work gets done, which skills are valued and how people navigate their careers. But understanding what those changes mean for people requires more than technology—and more than any single set of data.

On Saturday, October 24, undergraduate and graduate students will gather at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) for Work, Identity, and Opportunity in the Age of AI, the next Human Edge Studio convened by Strategic Growth & Innovation (SG+I).

Unlike a traditional hackathon focused primarily on building technical solutions, the Human Edge Studio is a structured, interdisciplinary learning experience designed to develop judgment, ethical reasoning, communication and applied capability alongside technical skills.

Working through a curated, real-world challenge, students will use an enterprise-grade Databricks environment bringing together Lightcast labor-market intelligence, O*NET occupational and skills information, federal Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), and Anthropic Economic Index data.

Their task is not to predict the distant future, but to examine how work, skills and opportunity are changing now—and consider what those changes mean for students entering the workforce, workers navigating career transitions, and the institutions supporting them.

The experience will extend beyond the Studio itself. Selected student teams will be invited to share their insights at a November 17 Human Edge Roundtable at the Massachusetts State House, bringing student perspectives into a broader cross-sector conversation about AI, work and economic opportunity.

"We hear a great deal about preparing people for an AI-enabled workforce, but I don't believe preparation can stop at learning how to use the technology," said Shauna Conway, Founder of Strategic Growth & Innovation. "As AI becomes more capable, students will need opportunities to question what they're seeing, understand what the data doesn't tell them, work with people who see a problem differently and make judgments they can stand behind. That's why we built Human Edge this way. We want students practicing those capabilities on real questions now, and bringing their perspectives into the conversations shaping what comes next."

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