Training for the AI economy vs AI onboarding

At Telakus, we talk to a lot of leaders who have applied to programs such as Claude Corps. Now that applications have rolled in and AI fellows are being placed, it's starting to come up more and more in our conversations.

Note: We do not have a partnership with any frontier-model companies at the time of writing this, including Anthropic.

It makes sense why an organization would want to establish a baseline comfort level with Claude or any other AI tool, especially when you're applying to bring on embedded junior AI Fellows. But it also makes us ask some fundamental questions.

The most important question: Is this training for the AI economy or training for AI tools?

• Should an organization invest all of its limited time for AI transformation into one tool and one company's training?
• Does the average executive director or senior leader at a place-based organization have more practical AI skills than a junior-level AI fellow?
• Is an embedded AI fellow who is funded by another org an extension of the client's team or a sales rep masked as a fellow?
• What is the difference between preparing an organization for tool-specific engagements such as Claude Corps and common activities like user onboarding and user education?
• Is the training an organization is being asked to complete specific to its geography? Does it cover things like state legislation, a region's history, or hyperlocal workforce data?
• If this program costs an organization nothing, what's the actual cost and who benefits?

In many ways, Telakus was founded on these questions.

Training for the AI economy closes the gap between AI developers and AI deployers.

Training for AI tools widens it.

That's why we advise organizations to "run their own race."

If you've applied for one of these programs, we'll happily build an accelerated place-based training plan around your program of choice. Because you should own your AI adoption instead of renting it from the developers.