TOLEDO — Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz has proclaimed this week “Toledo AI Week” for the second consecutive year as Great Lakes AI Week opened Tuesday at Bowling Green State University, offering Northwest Ohio workers, students and job seekers free hands-on artificial intelligence training and certification, according to the event announcement distributed by EIN Presswire.
The three-day series runs through Nov. 12 with a different focus each day. Tuesday’s Great Lakes AI Leadership Summit is at BGSU’s Bowen-Thompson Student Union in Bowling Green. Wednesday is AI Week Community Day at One SeaGate in downtown Toledo, aimed at residents, job seekers, students and small-business owners, with in-person programming in the afternoon and virtual sessions in the morning. Thursday’s AI for Business Summit is at the University of Toledo’s Lancelot Thompson Student Union, the announcement said.
Organizers say the week is built around the free AI Ready Ohio certification. The Enterprise Technology Association produces the event, with JobsOhio as headline partner and BGSU and the University of Toledo as host partners, and the program brings together more than 120 speakers, university presidents, employers and community leaders, according to the announcement.
The pitch rests on pay. Jobs requiring AI skills advertise an average wage premium of 62 percent and are growing almost eight times faster than the overall job market, according to PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, cited in the announcement. Organizers frame the free training as a way for workers without an employer-sponsored path into those skills to close the gap.
Northwest Ohio has a claim on the program’s roots: AI Ready Ohio began in the region, and state workforce leaders have been touring Ohio this fall with the separate WorkOhio initiative to connect job seekers with regional job experts. The two efforts land in Toledo in the same season the city is also wrestling with a difficult budget — NewsForce247 reported Monday that Toledo’s budget is due to council Sunday after an income tax defeat, with layoffs in question.
What happens next is simple for anyone interested: the Community Day sessions at One SeaGate run Wednesday, Nov. 11, and the business summit follows Thursday, Nov. 12, at the University of Toledo. The certification training is free, and organizers say it is open to workers, students and job seekers across Northwest Ohio.
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