Extension Foundation Releases Updated 2026 National AI Report with New Workforce-Level Insights
The Extension Foundation has released the updated 2026 National AI Report, expanding the original 2025 report with new workforce-level findings from Extension professionals across roles, program areas, and career stages. The report was authored by Aaron Weibe, Ph.D.,Extension Foundation; Dhruti Patel, Ed.D, University of Maryland Extension; David Warren, Oklahoma State University; and Mark Locklear, Extension Foundation.
The original report, released in December 2025, synthesized findings from a national AI landscape assessment, virtual focus groups, and in-person convenings with Cooperative Extension and agInnovation leaders. That work identified systemwide priorities around AI governance, public trust, workforce development, shared infrastructure, and responsible use across the Land-grant system. The 2026 update builds on that foundation by adding a fifth phase of engagement conducted in February 2026 during the Joint Council of Extension Professionals national conference in Savannah, Georgia. This phase brought direct workforce perspectives into the study, capturing how AI adoption is being experienced by Extension agents, educators, specialists, and other professionals working in communities.
“This update gives us a more complete picture of AI readiness across the system,” said Aaron Weibe, Ph.D., Director of Technology Services and Communications for the Extension Foundation. “The 2025 report helped identify leadership priorities. The 2026 expansion helps us understand what those priorities look like in practice for the professionals who will be expected to use, explain, and steward these tools in their daily work.”
The updated report finds broad alignment between leadership priorities and workforce concerns, while also identifying key gaps that must be addressed for AI adoption to be effective. Leaders emphasized coordination, infrastructure, policy development, and long-term opportunity. Extension professionals emphasized the immediate need for clear guidance, practical training, ethical guardrails, workload capacity, and stronger alignment between institutional strategy and real-world implementation.
Across the full study, three priorities emerged as central to the next phase of AI leadership for Cooperative Extension and agInnovation: people, trust, and coordination. The report concludes that workforce readiness is the most urgent need; that public trust must be protected through transparency, human oversight, and clear standards; and that shared data, common platforms, and aligned policies are needed to prevent fragmentation across the Land-grant system.
The 2026 report also reframes future action around institutional reflection and local implementation. Rather than prescribing a single path forward, the report provides questions that institutions can use to examine their own AI governance, workforce readiness, ethical practices, data infrastructure, and community-facing responsibilities. The report highlights the Extension Foundation’s ongoing work to support responsible AI implementation through tools such as ExtensionBot and MERLIN, which demonstrate early models for AI-enabled information discovery, data stewardship, attribution, and human-centered content review within Cooperative Extension.
The full 2026 National AI Report is available at: https://extension.org/national-ai-report-2026/
This work is supported in part by New Technologies for Ag Extension, funding opportunity no. USDA-NIFA-OP-010186, grant no. 2023-41595-41325 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
About the Extension Foundation
The Extension Foundation is a nonprofit established in 2006 by Extension Directors and Administrators nationwide. The Extension Foundation is embedded in the U.S. Cooperative Extension System and serves on the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy. Its mission is to empower a national network of community-based educators, volunteers, and partners to turn knowledge into real-world solutions for stronger communities and people.
