By: David Griffin, Marketing & Communications, Mount Vernon Springfield Chamber of Commerce
Artificial intelligence is no longer something businesses can look at only as a technology issue. It is changing how employees complete their work, how companies invest in software and infrastructure, and how organizations think about productivity, security and workforce needs.
Those changes have a particularly strong connection to Northern Virginia. The region is home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of data centers, while businesses and organizations across Fairfax County are deciding where AI fits into their own operations.
Some are already using AI for marketing, research, administrative work and customer service. Others are still determining whether the available tools provide enough value to justify the investment. At the same time, Virginia is beginning to address some of the larger questions surrounding the infrastructure and workforce changes connected to AI.
Here’s where several of those issues stand in September 2026.
Virginia Takes a New Approach to Data Centers and AI
One of the most significant recent developments for Northern Virginia came on September 18, when Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced Virginia’s new Data Center Accountability Framework and signed Executive Order 22.
The framework focuses on five broad areas: transparency, environmental protections, energy costs, the electric grid and clean energy, and Virginia’s workforce. Some measures are being implemented through executive action, while other proposals will require legislative action.
Executive Order 22 also establishes a new Artificial Intelligence Task Force to examine issues associated with AI’s rapid development, including workforce displacement, data privacy and cybersecurity.
For Northern Virginia, the connection between AI and data centers is particularly important. Training and operating increasingly powerful AI systems requires substantial computing capacity, and that means greater demand for the facilities, electricity and other infrastructure supporting those systems.
As a result, AI policy is becoming connected to issues that affect many industries beyond technology. Energy, utilities, construction, commercial real estate, workforce development and economic development can all be part of the conversation.
Read Virginia’s Data Center Accountability announcement
How Is AI Actually Changing Work?
Much of the public discussion around AI and employment centers on which jobs could eventually be automated or replaced. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis provides a more detailed picture of what workers are doing with AI today.
Researchers surveyed nearly 14,000 workers across four quarterly waves between August 2025 and May 2026. They found that AI adoption is both widespread and shallow. At least one in five workers uses AI in more than 80% of occupations. More than 40% of individual job tasks have AI adoption rates above 20%. But fewer than 3% of tasks have adoption rates above 50%.
That distinction matters, because it shows AI isn’t confined to software developers and technology companies. It is showing up across a large portion of the workforce, but employees are generally using it for specific parts of their jobs rather than everything they do.
Adoption is highest in cognitive and information-intensive work. According to the research, some of the most AI-assisted tasks include reading documents to gather technical information, preparing research reports and analyzing data for trends. Hands-on activities and tasks requiring direct physical interaction generally show much lower adoption.
For employers, that makes the immediate question less about whether an entire position can be automated and more about which parts of a job AI can help employees complete. It also creates management questions. What information should employees be permitted to enter into an AI system? Which work requires human review? Do employees know how to check AI-generated information? Where does using AI save time, and where does it simply create another step?
Those questions will differ considerably from one workplace to another.
Read the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis research
AI Is Moving Beyond Writing and Chatbots
For many businesses, the first introduction to generative AI came through tools that could draft an email, summarize a document, answer a question or generate marketing copy.
The technology is moving beyond those individual tasks. One of the major trends identified in McKinsey’s 2026 technology outlook is agentic AI, which refers to AI systems capable of planning and carrying out multistep workflows with greater autonomy.
Interest in the technology has increased rapidly. McKinsey reports that job postings associated with agentic AI increased 952% from 2024 to 2025, while equity investment in the category reached $9.9 billion in 2025.
That could eventually change the way businesses think about AI. Instead of asking an AI tool to help an employee with one piece of work, organizations may increasingly consider whether AI can handle several connected steps in a process.
That doesn’t eliminate the need for oversight. In many cases, it makes decisions about accuracy, security, permissions and accountability more important.
The AI Boom Requires Physical Infrastructure
For something that often feels entirely digital, AI has a very large physical footprint. McKinsey reports that spending on AI infrastructure doubled from 2024 to 2025. Expanding AI capacity requires data centers, semiconductors, cooling equipment, electrical infrastructure and enormous amounts of power.
The report estimates that U.S. data centers running AI workloads alone could consume as much electricity by 2030 as California does today. Infrastructure isn’t always able to expand at the same speed. Transformers can have lead times of more than two years in some markets, and more than 2,500 gigawatts of energy projects worldwide are waiting in grid connection queues.
Those numbers help explain why data centers, electricity rates, power generation and grid capacity are increasingly part of the AI discussion.
They also bring the issue much closer to home for Northern Virginia. Decisions about the next phase of AI infrastructure can affect communities, businesses, and local governments even if they never develop or sell an AI product themselves.
What Does AI Look Like for a Small Business?
The scale of AI investment can make the technology seem like an issue primarily for large corporations. The experience of a small business is likely to look very different. For many businesses, useful applications can be relatively simple: helping draft communications, organizing information, summarizing documents, assisting with customer service, or reducing time spent on repetitive administrative work.
Businesses also don’t need to implement AI everywhere at once. A more practical starting point may be identifying one repetitive process that takes employees a significant amount of time and determining whether an AI tool can improve it without sacrificing quality, privacy, or accuracy.
Training is becoming more readily available as well. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation now offer Small Business B(AI)sics, a free program designed specifically for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
The program includes training on AI terminology, prompting, workflows, and practical business applications, and the initiative aims to provide foundational AI skills to 40,000 small businesses.
Learn about Small Business B(AI)sics
The Question Isn’t Whether Every Business Needs More AI
AI is developing quickly, but that doesn’t mean every new tool makes sense for every organization. A restaurant, healthcare provider, nonprofit, contractor, retailer, and professional services firm will have very different opportunities and concerns. Even businesses within the same industry may reach different conclusions depending on their employees, customers, data, and existing processes.
The impact of AI goes well beyond the tools businesses are using in the workplace. It is changing day-to-day operations and technology decisions, while the growth of AI data centers is raising larger questions about electricity, infrastructure and development.
For businesses in Mount Vernon, Springfield, and throughout Fairfax County, staying informed doesn’t require chasing every new AI development. It means understanding where the technology intersects with your organization, your employees, your customers, and the regional economy.
As those connections continue to change, the Mount Vernon Springfield Chamber will continue following the developments that matter to our local business community.