🔒AI revolution poses urgent workforce development challenge for CT

This year is proving to be an interesting time to be a chief technology officer. “We ​want ​to ​make ​sure ​that ​every ​single ​one ​of ​our ​software ​engineers ​has ​the ​ability to ​leverage ​AI ​and ​build ​AI ​capabilities ​into ​what ​they ​do,” said Mojgan Lefebvre, the executive vice president and chief technology and operations officer of property and casualty insurer Travelers Cos. The insurance company, which has about 2,000 technology professionals based in Hartford — its largest tech team — had been engaging with artificial intelligence for years before the generative AI revolution, sparked by ChatGPT, burst onto the scene in 2022. “Everything ​we ​do ​is ​with ​data,” Lefebvre said. “Risk ​expertise ​is ​core ​to ​our ​business, and ​so ​modeling and ​general ​linear ​models, ​which ​are ​really ​the ​underpinnings ​of ​AI ​methodology, ​have ​been ​used ​for ​years.” In fact, every aspect of Travelers’ core business — underwriting, claim processing and service delivery — is being fundamentally changed by the application of AI. After she joined Travelers in 2018, Lefebvre established an AI accelerator division in 2020 to build core capabilities that could be disseminated into all parts of the business. Then the following year, she hired new leadership to create a tech and analytics learning organization to ensure that the workforce is kept up to date on a rapidly accelerating field. “Today all 30,000 of our employees have access to generative AI capabilities through what we consider a groundbreaking platform, TravAI,” she said. “It’s really a safe way from a data security, privacy and compliance perspective for us to put generative AI safely in the hands of all of our teams.” That offers just a glimpse into the massive effort big corporations are making to implement artificial intelligence — and the sweeping implications it has for their workforce. And it raises significant questions for the state of Connecticut. How can it ensure that workforce development efforts — particularly for core industries like insurance and financial services — remain competitive in the artificial intelligence future?

“People are feeling like they’re late to the game, and everybody else is utilizing this to their benefit,” said Rob Stone, the general manager of intelligent automation and analytics at Windsor’s SS&C Technologies, which provides software and outsourced services for the financial services and other industries. “But the reality is, it’s perfect timing for states like Connecticut to really invest and take it seriously and prepare the workforce for what is not going away — which is the reality of AI revolutionizing the way business operates.”

White-collar ‘bloodbath’

SS&C is another Connecticut-based global corporation that’s on the leading edge of AI innovation. Like Travelers, the software and business process provider’s tech-heavy core business already integrated machine learning and other aspects of AI long before the large language models of generative artificial intelligence came along. But that newer technology has greatly accelerated what they do. “In financial services you’re dealing with a lot of heavy documentation, legal docs, credit agreements, statements, invoices,” Stone said. “And so, the ability to utilize generative AI models to ingest information at scale and quickly get to the relevant points of information that you need in order to streamline any sort of financial services operations process — that’s where we’ve seen a lot of uplift.” In 2022, SS&C acquired Blue Prism Group — a robotics process automation company — in a $1.6 billion deal. Since then, it has continued to use the platform to roll out automation and AI innovations both internally and for its client companies. Though he recognizes there is currently a lot of hype around the technology, Stone says AI is not just the latest fad. He says it’s transforming the pace of change in every industry. “So, it behooves individuals to ensure that they’re up to speed, educated, ready,” he said. “But it also behooves companies and states and municipalities to ensure that their workforce is ready and can meet the AI moment.” Just how disruptive that AI moment will be for the human workforce is the subject of a lot of debate. Earlier this year, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warned that the technology his company is developing could prove to be a white-collar “bloodbath” — wiping out as many as half of all entry-level jobs in the next one to five years. Neither Stone nor Lefebvre agree with that analysis. Instead, they see a different dynamic. “I think the form of the roles will change, but certainly no doubt that every individual in every role, inclusive of engineering, will be doing a whole lot more than they were capable of doing without AI,” Lefebvre said. SS&C has already deployed what it calls “digital workers” — software robots — “not in an effort to replace our staff, but really an effort to remove some of the friction that they might have in terms of satisfying their customers on a day-to-day basis,” Stone said. And, he says, where AI, like other automation technologies before it, does take over what was traditionally done by human beings, “we don’t think that AI becomes a complete replacement of the workforce. We think it is absolutely a complementary technology.”

“I sense the fear,” said Chris DiPentima, the CEO of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. But, he too is bullish on the future of AI. “It’s not displacing the workforce, but you have to understand how does the workforce now need to adjust to become the superusers of artificial intelligence?” And for a state like Connecticut, it’s particularly important to grasp this dynamic. “Connecticut competes on the skills, innovation and knowledge of our workforce,” DiPentima points out. That need for workforce education and development puts a particular onus on policymakers, he says, to recognize their role in managing this disruptive change. “Government needs to embrace that this is the innovative technology of the future and not run away from it, not put our heads in the sand, not be scared of it, but actually fully understand it, especially before attempting to regulate it at a state level,” he said.

The man who has so far led the effort in the legislature to both regulate AI in Connecticut and to make sure the workforce is ready for it is State Sen. James Maroney (D-Milford). And he is concerned that this state is falling behind. “I think a lot of other states around us have seized the opportunity much better than we did, in terms of the investments that New York state and Massachusetts have done in AI,” he said. “I think we still have an opportunity to be a leader in responsible AI innovation.”

‘At scale’

Maroney’s second attempt to regulate the use of AI for businesses once again failed in the legislature in the 2025 session over the threat of a veto from Gov. Ned Lamont. But a measure did pass that makes a start on funding AI education in the state. The legislation earmarked $500,000 for the Connecticut Online AI Academy run by Charter Oak State College, as well as $25,000 for AI training at the Boys and Girls Club of Milford and $75,000 for three Boys and Girls Clubs’ AI training pilots in the state. The state budget included $200,000 to create a curriculum and resources around AI for K-12 schools. There’s also $1.5 million over two years for the Connecticut AI Alliance to procure computing power to increase access to artificial intelligence technology for both higher education and small businesses. “I think we need to focus on small businesses because large businesses are going to figure this out on their own,” Maroney said. He points to a 2024 Work Trend Index Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn, which showed that 66% of business leaders said they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills, and 71% said they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them. “We need to do mass reskilling and upskilling of the employees in Connecticut,” he said. On the success side of the ledger, Maroney points to the online academy established by Charter Oak State College, which became the first state program in the nation to work with Google on developing a general AI skills curriculum.

“It’s no longer about, ‘oh, AI is going to get you a job’, it is, ‘you need AI skills in order to have a job,’” said David Ferreira, the provost of Charter Oak. “We wanted to make sure everyone has that opportunity.” The college has been running the five-week online course free for state residents since January of this year. “We have waiting lists every month,” said Nancy Taylor, Charter Oak’s director of workforce development. “We have about 2,000 students who have come through the course already. We thought when we launched it in January, we’d have about a thousand for the entire year. So, we’ve had huge demand.”

The course covers ethical and safety aspects of AI use, and teaches students how to most effectively interact with large language models — a skill that’s called “prompt engineering” — contextualizing the assignments toward their specific job or personal goals. The college uses Google’s curriculum as its textbook and software, and then adds an instructor. Ferreira says that aspect is key to students’ success. “When you do just a self-paced version, national studies have shown that it’s only about a 5 to 15% completion rate,” he said. “But when you add an instructor, the completion rates go up to around 80%.” Charter Oak has also done follow-up surveys with students who complete the course to track how comfortable they became with integrating AI into their work. “About 8% used it every day prior to the course on a regular basis. After five weeks, it went up to 44%,” Ferreira said. Building on their success with individuals, the college is now working to develop courses for small business and nonprofits to implement AI. They’re looking to work with chambers of commerce to try to offer the course as widely as possible. “Honestly, if we can do this at scale, which is what we are planning to do, that’ll put Connecticut at the forefront,” Ferreira said. A recent jobs report from the World Economic Forum found that 39% of existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated by 2030, and the report cited AI and big data as the fastest-growing skills. In all, the report anticipates that 59% of the world’s workforce will need to be reskilled in the next five years. Ferreira points out that in Connecticut, that would be more than a million people. “We talk about the 70,000 unfilled jobs in Connecticut, and that’s important, but if we’re not planning for the 1 million that are going to need to be reskilled within the next four and a half years — if you don’t have that as a key cornerstone of your economic development plan for a state, you only have about a quarter of your economic development,” he said.

Need for coordination

“Here in Connecticut we have quite a bit of momentum, but the momentum is not fully directed or guided,” said Vahid Behzadan, an assistant professor at the University of New Haven’s college of engineering and co-founder of the Connecticut AI Alliance (CAIA). CAIA was established in March of this year, bringing together universities, government representatives and industry groups to position Connecticut as a premier hub for artificial intelligence. “We aim to act as a nexus that connects resources, needs, experts and talent to facilitate economic development, workforce development and innovation in the AI space,” he said. Coordination on this effort in higher-ed is vital, according to Behzadan. “We are working on making sure that academic institutions are connected with each other, learning opportunities are promoted not just locally, but across the state,” he said. “And not just for college students, but for anybody who’s looking to learn about … the basics of artificial intelligence.” Behzadan says Connecticut has to focus on two opportunities: developing the core AI engineering workforce, those who create, innovate and maintain AI systems; and ensuring that professionals in every industry sector are aware of how those tools can be leveraged in their area of expertise. He says the disruptive potential of AI — that jobs bloodbath — should not be dismissed. “The more we automate problem-solving, it’s natural to assume that fewer human problem-solvers would be required, but that’s in the very long run,” he said. “In the meanwhile, AI is here and those who leverage it are going to benefit from it a lot more than those who don’t.”