UMD Workshop Examines How AI Is Redefining the Tech Workforce

As artificial intelligence accelerates across industries, the balance between technical expertise and human adaptability is being tested. Automation is reshaping how people work, how companies hire and how universities prepare students for an economy increasingly influenced by intelligent systems.

As industries adapt to automation, educators are reevaluating how to prepare students for this new reality. To explore these questions, the University of Maryland’s Department of Computer Science organized AI and the Future Tech Workforce, a workshop held Oct. 24, 2025, at the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering. The event brought together educators, researchers and industry leaders to examine how academic training and workplace skills must evolve in the age of AI.

Keynotes from alum and Alpha Intelligence Labs co-founder and chief technology officer Zeki Mokhtarzada and University of Maryland Professor Jordan Boyd-Graber opened the discussion, encouraging educators and professionals to treat AI as a collaborator and to connect computing with human insight. Their remarks reflected the department’s longstanding role in shaping AI education and research at UMD.

Since its founding in 1974 under AI pioneer and first chair Jack Minker, the Department of Computer Science has been a national leader in artificial intelligence education and research. Today, it offers nearly 50 courses in areas such as generative AI, machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing and robotics.

The department enrolls more than 4,300 computer science majors, including 580 pursuing the machine learning track as of fall 2024.

During the workshop, participants joined small-group discussions exploring how automation and AI tools are redefining job readiness. Faculty and industry professionals debated how universities should adapt curricula and whether AI should be viewed as a core professional collaborator.

Kevin Giffhorn, director of education and government at Mindgrub Technologies, said AI is changing not only technical requirements but also the dynamics of teamwork.

“We still need people to be technically sound, but we also need people who can work together as a group,” Giffhorn said. “You need to be able to work with a team, because you can be more agile using AI to get to the solution faster.”

Eric Boyle, practice manager for STEM experience at AARP, said adaptability has become a hiring priority across industries.

“Technical depth is so variable now with the pace that technology is changing,” Boyle said. “It really becomes paramount for people to be able to learn and adapt.”

He described AI literacy as a new baseline expectation for workers, similar to digital literacy in the early 2000s.

“AI literacy is paramount,” he said. “It’s enabling our workforce to build the skills they need to interact with AI, and as they’re learning to use large language models and other tools, the technology is changing as fast as they can learn it.”

Boyle encouraged students entering computer science to develop focused expertise within AI.

“You can’t be the expert on everything,” he said. “But if the goal is to earn a degree and then get into the workforce or start a company, it’s important to become an expert in one of those technologies, whether it’s building it or leveraging it to solve problems.”

The department is ranked No. 16 nationally and No. 9 among public institutions in the 2025 U.S. News & World Report rankings. A decade-long analysis of CSRankings.org data shows that UMD has remained among the top 10 computer science programs in AI-related research output since 2015, rising into the top three public universities for the past five years.

“This workshop brought together the right group of people including industry partners and faculty, at the right place in the Department of Computer Science at UMD, to chart a path forward for educating the future tech workforce," said Matthias Zwicker, chair of UMD’s Department of Computer Science and holder of the Elizabeth Iribe Chair for Innovation and the Phillip H. and Catherine C. Horvitz Professorship. "The insights from the workshop will be crucial for us to offer cutting-edge learning opportunities to our students that will enable their success in launching their careers.”

—Story by Samuel Malede Zewdu, CS Communications