A promising AI workforce project, 'braiding' funding, and 'Cheesecake Factory Menu Grants.'

You might have already read about it, but if you’re struggling with sorting how to train workers in ways that lead to real jobs around AI, I’d strongly recommend keeping an eye on Claude Corps.

Announced last week, the program is a collaboration of Claude-maker Anthropic, Social Finance, and CodePath to train and place fellows in roles helping nonprofits use AI to achieve their goals. The fellows will be workers with fewer than two years of work experience. For 12 months, they’ll receive an $85,000 yearly wage, which is comfortably above the living wage for a young, single person in most of the country.

On AI workforce programs, I’ve been skeptical of the overfocus among policymakers on teaching technical skills that might not age well, as well as aiming too low at fuzzy concepts like AI literacy when companies are looking for workers with skills for AI integration. That’s why I came away especially excited about Claude Corps after talking with the folks building it. There’s an intentionality to actually figuring out AI questions for employers—and creating a positive endpoint for workers—that I haven’t really heard in other discussions.

Michael Ellison, CodePath’s co-founder and CEO, told me that while he would be thrilled to see fellows stay on with their host nonprofits after completion, one hope for the project is giving workers clear experience as “AI change agents” who can do the “human-to-human” work of sorting how AI can help organizations do their work better.

“This is very much a justification for why humans are needed and so important in this AI transformation,” Ellison said. “We’re building this program to be borrowed. . . . If we are defining AI fluency, and what we are defining as AI fluency is what’s in demand, that should lead to a lot of options” for fellows after the completion of the program.

Ellison noted that the program is “softer” than CodePath’s previous work with senior software engineers. He noted that being prepared for AI-related employment isn’t just knowing a discrete and static set of skills, given that the rapid development of the technology and its applications mean workers and employers will need to continue to adapt.

“It’s a forever challenge,” Ellison said. “It’s not a one-time thing.”

I also spoke with Tracy Palandjian, the CEO and co-founder of Social Finance, which will be studying the results of the fellowships. She said one early hope is that fellows will help nonprofits be able to do more through fellows helping them automate tasks that can be automated and potentially letting these organizations do more as a result.

“The biggest bang for buck in terms of impact is how host organizations are able to deliver on their mission more efficiently and more effectively,” Palandjian said.

It’s unusual for nonprofits to be on the front end of this type of technological integration, which is something Palandjian noted as a unique plus for this project. Obviously, nonprofits are private employers, but they come with their own unique pressures—including diminishing access to public money.

That, to me, creates another good reason to follow this project. If Claude Corps fellows can generate real results in nonprofit environments—and amid the massive and unique pressures facing nonprofits right now—the program could produce quite useful AI-integration lessons for other employers, public or private.