This Summer, U.S. Interns Taught Their Bosses About AI

This summer internship season, the standard task wasn't fetching coffee for managers — it was teaching them how to use artificial intelligence. AI agents — programs that independently search for information, analyze it, and produce results based on a given task — are now running under interns' supervision, who spend their time building and overseeing those agents instead of answering phones or taking notes. Jasreen Toor, who interned at AI company Eightfold AI, is a prime example: she built and supervised a Claude-based agent that scans company data and drafts the first version of marketing materials — a world away from how AI used to be treated as just a brainstorming and research tool.

The trend is backed by some striking numbers. According to the New York Federal Reserve, the unemployment rate among recent college graduates stands at 5.7% — nearly double the 2.9% average across the broader college-educated workforce. Meanwhile, a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that demand for AI skills in entry-level roles jumped from 13.5% to 35% over the past year, from last fall to this spring. In other words, even as jobs for inexperienced hires shrink, the number of interns keeps growing — by 4% a year, according to NACE's forecast — because they've become companies' testing ground for new AI-driven workflows.

Big companies' experience bears this out. Last year, Liberty Mutual offered full-time positions to 79% of its interns, while Duolingo pushed that figure to 80%. At programmatic media company MiQ, interns built agents that compare internal documents and automatically flag discrepancies in Salesforce data — completely transforming work that used to be checked by hand, line by line. At Northeastern University, the number of internships requiring AI skills doubled over the year, reaching 1,500.

Still, this shift carries a double-edged risk. Korn Ferry's vice president of AI strategy, Shanda Mintz, notes that right now, top companies are giving interns the chance to "rebuild their own role with AI" — but that window may not last: "once the role has been rebuilt, what will the next intern actually do?" On the other hand, employers are now weighing candidates' practical skills over their résumés, which only tightens the classic catch-22: you need experience to get experience.

Experts also warn that as AI takes over routine tasks — data entry, document review, presentation prep — there's a risk of losing the discipline and practical skills that used to be built through exactly that kind of routine work. Liberty Mutual's vice president for early-career programs, Maura Quinn, puts it this way: that kind of routine work "built discipline but didn't always build judgment." So companies now face a new question: which tasks should go to AI, and which should stay with young employees so they can develop their own critical thinking.

In the end, the 2026 intern class may walk into a completely different work environment next year. For business owners and HR leaders, the signal is clear: treating AI not merely as a cost-cutting tool but as a way to develop young talent's skills could be the key to building a strong team over the long run.