Michael Ioffe showed up at Transform in a suit and tie. That detail matters more than it probably should.
The Arist co-founder was at the conference to announce Make America AI-Ready, a free AI-readiness course offered in partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor for pretty much everyone in America.
I’ve known Michael for a few years now. In a world where the hoodie is basically a founder's uniform — a signal that says I'm building, not performing — it’s clear that he departed from the tech industry standard in business casual as a statement. Intentional or not, it reads as: I take this seriously. I'm here to do something real.
Good. Because what Arist built here deserves that energy.
Make America AI Ready is a free, seven-day AI literacy course delivered entirely over SMS. Text "READY" to 20202. No laptop, no app, no broadband required. Ten minutes a day. Five core competency areas: understanding AI principles, real-world applications, prompting, evaluating outputs, and using AI responsibly.
I’ve been a big fan of Arist for years now. Part of it is the founders, Michael, Ryan Laverty and Maxine Anderson. They are for real. Then there’s Michael's origin story. Son of refugees. Running live entrepreneurship conversations in 500 cities across 50 countries by age 18. The SMS insight came to him in Yemen, when he realized that the most reliable delivery mechanism for learning, in places where resources are thin and the internet is unreliable, is the device already in everyone's pocket. A decade of building toward exactly this moment.
Arist didn't stumble into the DOL partnership. They earned it. Arist is making truly revolutionary products, which is why big, well-known companies in highly regulated industries choose them.
As noteworthy as this announcement is, the packaging makes it a little complicated.
"Under President Trump's leadership," the press release reads. The MAGA vibe to all this is more than an undercurrent, and it will cause a non-trivial number of people to scroll past something genuinely useful.
That's a shame. And that has nothing to do with Michael or Arist.
Here’s the reality: 59% of enterprise leaders report AI skills gaps, and only 27% of workers say their employer providers any AI training at all. The people this course is designed for, including hourly workers, people without laptops and people who've watched every tech wave break over their heads without catching a ride, don't have the luxury of boycotting something helpful because of the branding on the box. And what Arist is operationalizing isn’t dissimilar to the AI training that many white-collar workers get.
Michael, Ryan and Maxine built Arist to meet people where they are. Not where we wish they were. Where they actually are — on their phones, in 10-minute windows, trying to figure out if this AI thing is going to help them or hurt them.
Michael came to work. That work is important to keep American workers competitive on the global stage.
Even if only a handful of potential audience members show up for this, it’s worth it.