JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville’s business community is getting a new push to move artificial intelligence from experimentation to real workforce impact.
Dr. Carlton Robinson, Chief Innovation Officer at the Jax Chamber, joined “This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition” to discuss the Chamber’s newly launched Center for Applied Infrastructure and why its focus is “human-centered AI” in the workplace.
Robinson said the timing was driven in part by how Jacksonville was labeled in a national adoption snapshot. “Jacksonville was identified as a nascent adopter at the time,” he said, referencing a Brookings Institute study. “So… I saw that as a really, really big opportunity for us to say, Hey. We’re pretty good with AI. We’ve got some amazing companies. Need people to know it.”
Robinson described the initiative as a form of economic development—treating AI readiness as something communities should build and support the way they do other essentials. “When we think about infrastructure, we think of water. Energy,” he said. “Over the next three to five years, one of our biggest tasks in jobs is going to be how do we promote human-centered AI? How do we preserve human agency as this new type of technology really takes over our workplace.”
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A key theme: AI should help workers perform better, not be pushed as a replacement strategy. Robinson said the first step is separating what must remain human-led from what can be automated. “We’ve to identify what absolutely positively needs to be human-led. And then how do we augment that with AI?” he said.
Justice noted a simple example from his own workflow: transcription tools. After recording interviews, he said, “I upload a file and it transcribes our visit… this is not going to take my job, but it’s going to make my job a lot easier.”
Robinson said that kind of practical use case sharing is part of what the Chamber wants to scale. “The more use cases we can build and demonstrate for the community, the more likely we are to start accepting the role of AI in the workplace,” he said.
When it comes to internal rules for AI, Robinson urged companies—especially smaller ones—to avoid jumping straight to a strict policy. “Maybe we don’t start with the policy because the policy can be extremely restrictive,” he said. Instead, he recommended starting with a “charter” that outlines how and when AI should be used, then using real experience to inform formal policy later—along with legal input.
The Chamber is also rolling out hands-on workforce training through its Gen-AI Apprentice Program, built around understanding workflows, governance, and the difference between chatbots and “agentic AI.” Robinson defined the next phase this way: “As we move to agentic AI… we now are using generative AI and other forms of AI to complete a specific task for us autonomously. Without prompting.”
Looking ahead, Robinson said the Chamber’s work will include more events, more education “in short burst” formats, and a focus on building a full regional pipeline. “We’ve got to have our K through 12 involved in this,” he said, arguing that visibility into local efforts can help reinforce Jacksonville’s position as AI evolves.