Helping professionals navigate the challenges and potential of AI

AI adoption at work has skyrocketed — from 8% of U.S. workers in 2023 to 35% in 2025 — but a majority still feel unprepared to use it. According to a national survey by Jobs for the Future, Inc., 56% of workers report a gap between exposure and confidence. MIT Open Learning is closing that gap with practical, online programs that turn AI knowledge into actionable workplace skills.

One such initiative is MIT xPRO®, which offers flexible, online programs geared toward technical professionals looking to grow their skillsets in high-demand areas, such as AI. The courses, created by MIT faculty, emphasize application over theory and teach skills and concepts intended to be applied in real work environments.

According to MIT Open Learning’s Luke Hobson, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership, successfully implementing AI at work starts with truly understanding what AI is and approaching it systematically and strategically.

“When you say ‘AI’ in 2026, everyone immediately thinks about ChatGPT and generative AI… being able to put in a prompt and get some sort of ‘magical’ response,” Hobson, assistant director of instructional design for MIT xPRO, said in a new podcast episode of eSpeaks. “But in terms of these courses, we’re going to be learning about the fundamentals of exactly how AI works. We need to be able to really understand the fundamentals and the capabilities of exactly what we’re trying to do and then work our way backwards — to reverse engineer — to get the desired results.”

Two MIT xPRO courses meet this urgent need: Generative AI Playbook: Tools, Real-World Applications, and Governance, for professionals seeking clarity on what generative AI is and how to use it across industries; and Deploying AI for Strategic Impact, for leaders and practitioners ready to scale AI efforts beyond experimentation.

Many organizations are pushing employees to use AI, but without a clear strategy, this can lead to missteps. The Deploying AI course, for example, guides professionals in aligning AI with organizational goals, helping them make strategic decisions that deliver real impact.

But what does it take to create a course like Deploying AI? Hobson, a self-proclaimed “learning nerd,” points to two guiding principles: understanding how people actually learn, and digging into data to see what learners are most eager to master. 

“There was a lot of reviewing of data and market trends, and seeing the different types of tools that people are looking up and want to learn about,” Hobson recalled.

Once these trends were identified, the team then worked with MIT faculty to create a learning experience that incorporates activities, assessments, webinars, and more. A defining quality of the MIT xPRO courses in AI is the balance of academic rigor with real-world application.

“I would say that for 75% of the time when you're inside of a learning experience that my team creates, you're doing something,” said Hobson. “For every single thing that I design, after one week, you're going to know how to go out and actually do it, practice, fail, and then learn.”