Global AI and Robotics, Inc. is a Georgia nonprofit building an earn-while-you-learn apprenticeship program in AI operations, robotics and manufacturing, drone systems, and cybersecurity. We design it alongside the employers who’ll hire our apprentices.
Drive down Highway 74 South and you’ll pass plants running automated lines, PLC-controlled equipment, and machine vision systems. Those employers need technicians who can program, maintain, and secure that equipment. Most of the people who could fill those jobs have never had a way in.
That’s the gap we’re closing. GAIRI pairs classroom instruction with paid, supervised work at partner employers, so apprentices earn a wage from day one and finish with credentials a hiring manager actually recognizes.
GAIRI’s mission is to expand access to advanced technology careers for individuals across Fayette County and Georgia’s South Metro region by delivering industry-aligned education, hands-on technical training, and workforce pathways that lead to high-demand careers. In partnership with local employers, government, and community stakeholders, we develop a skilled, future-ready workforce designed to meet the evolving needs of Georgia’s technology and advanced manufacturing economy.
Built on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Registered Apprenticeship model. Final occupations and standards are set with the Office of Apprenticeship.
Outreach through workforce boards, veteran services, schools, and community partners. Candidates are assessed for aptitude and matched to a pathway and an employer.
Approximately 4,000 hours of technical training, delivered at GAIRI and through training partners and organized into stackable certificates that build on each other.
Apprentices work at a partner employer under an assigned mentor, logging competencies on real equipment with scheduled wage increases as skills grow.
Completers earn a nationally recognized credential and industry certificates, and move into a full-time role with the employer that trained them.
We don’t invent our own competency lists. Each pathway is mapped to frameworks industry already uses, then organized into stackable, industry-aligned certificates.
For the people who put AI to work inside a business: prompt engineering, workflow automation, LLM operations, AI governance, and responsible AI risk management.
Aligned to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, SFIA, and Microsoft, Google, and AWS AI learning paths. Delivered in-house.
Industrial and collaborative robot programming, PLCs, machine vision, sensors, predictive maintenance, and lean manufacturing. The skills plant managers ask for by name.
Mapped to industry training standards including FANUC, Siemens Mechatronics, Rockwell Automation, ISA, and SME.
Commercial drone operations, flight safety, aerial imaging, and AI-assisted data analysis for inspection, public safety, agriculture, and infrastructure work.
Delivered with specialized training partners.
Defending the power grids, water systems, transit, and data centers communities depend on against criminal and terror-linked cyber threats. Apprentices learn threat monitoring, incident response, and industrial control system security.
Aligned to the NICE Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity. Delivered in-house.
Advanced technology work shouldn’t be reserved for people who already had a head start. Our pathways are built for career starters and career changers alike.
We’re forming a founding consortium of Fayette County and South Metro employers. Founding partners have a direct hand in what gets taught, and first access to the apprentices who learn it.
Our long-term plan is a dedicated training center in Peachtree City with AI labs, a robotics and advanced manufacturing floor, a cybersecurity training lab, and drone technology and aerial systems space. Early instruction begins in partner facilities while we finalize a permanent site.
Employers, community partners, funders, and future apprentices: we’d like to hear from you.