EVERETT — Say the letters, AI, and it can illicit no shortage of thoughts, from the curiosity of what future technology can provide to the panic of losing your career and paycheck to a machine.
Artificial intelligence. The term regarding computer power displacing human jobs, prompting layoffs, corporate realignments and causing plenty of uncertainty is an emotional subject. Gallup polling one week ago showed Americans are leery of AI. This negativity, Gallup says, is especially pronounced among younger adults. Nearly half of adults aged 18 to 29 (47%) now believe AI does more harm than good, up from 36% in 2025 and considerably higher than the 30% recorded in 2023 and 27% recorded in 2024. The 11-percentage-point increase between 2025 and 2026 was the largest among any age group.
At the recent Farnborough Air Show in England, Wendy Poischbeg, CEO of The Greater Everett Chamber of Commerce, found that the human work force is still a primary focus for aerospace and defense companies as the AI era emerges. Jobs she’s trying to draw to Everett.
“One thing I heard at a number of panel discussions, especially around AI,” Poischbeg tells EverettPost.com, “is that the human element is number one. Because you cannot mess up once. AI has to be perfect. Every single time. Especially when it comes to aerospace and putting people in the sky.”
May and June’s high school and college graduates are nervously approaching consequential decisions about future job security when it comes to AI. Continuing students are inundated with training models to educate themselves and integrate AI as a skill in hopes of not being displaced by it.
“I would say the conversation with each of the companies I met with was still around workforce,” Poischbeg tells the EverettPost.com about her recent trip the four-day international airshow where titans of the aerospace and defense industry gather biennially to broker deals and expand business.
“Washington State continues to be attractive because of our talent. Almost every company I met with wanted to talk about workforce,” in Snohomish County, “and we have a skilled workforce at the ready,” Poischbeg reported.
Poischbeg has attended four such international air shows in Europe, saying of the latest, “I planned to attend to connect with folks that I had met with in the years past and try to maintain those relationships. I look at it as an opportunity to just reinforce why Everett is an excellent place to locate production and supply chain.”
Of Farnborough, Poischbeg says last month’s air show was larger than in the years past, “and so keeping Everett top of mind is just an opportunity. And then you use Boeing, and their largest assembly facility here in Everett as kind of that gateway into the conversation”, to draw more companies to the local hub of aerospace.
A main advantage in Poischbeg’s discussions are local training programs that create the area’s qualified workforce. “I love being able to talk about our training programs and what is working”, she says, “how stellar our engineering talent is here in in Everett.” The list includes the Washington Aerospace Research and Training Center at Paine Field, a program of Edmonds College, the Advanced Manufacturing Training Center, or AM-TEC, at Everett College, AJAC, an apprenticeship program in advanced manufacturing, and WSU-Everett’s electrical engineering program.
The disclaimer to all of this is that as rapidly as AI is being developed and deployed, some industry segments still realize there’s a premium and a need on the human element of technological production.