Ask most college students what “working with AI” looks like, and the answer is usually a chatbot. That gap between perception and reality is exactly what pushed Dallas, Texas-based Outamation to start training students on real AI problems years before AI internships became a common line on a resume.
Nirmal Patel, Outamation’s Chief AI Officer, and Devang Kamdar, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, were both once interns themselves, working inside the mortgage industry before founding technology built for it. That experience shaped how they think about bringing new people into the field today.
Why AI Chatbots Aren’t The Whole Picture
Patel says most students who come through the door understand AI only as something they type questions into. They have not seen it used to solve a real operational problem, and that limits how they think about their own career options. Outamation’s internship program is built to close that gap by putting students directly on the same kinds of problems the company’s paying clients rely on it to solve.
Those efforts have included a past partnership with Extern, a two-month cohort program that pulled students from multiple universities into a structured AI curriculum. According to earlier company materials, more than 3,000 externs have gone through Outamation-connected programs to date.
Learning AI On Real Mortgage Problems
The work is not a simulation. Students train models to read, extract, and search actual mortgage documents using Python, optical character recognition, and retrieval-augmented generation, then build production-style pipelines against genuinely messy, real-world paperwork. Patel says that shift, from using AI to building with it, is usually where the light bulb goes on for students who arrived thinking AI meant a chatbot.
Alongside the technical work, the programs layer in digital literacy, communication, and career-readiness support, including resume building and interview preparation. The goal, Patel says, is turning a class project into an actual job.
From Internship To Career
The payoff shows up on both sides. Patel points to former program participants who have gone on to roles at companies including Tesla and American Express. Inside Outamation, some of that same talent pipeline has led directly to hires, interns who later joined the company and now help build the products its clients use.
Kamdar frames the bigger lesson for the industry this way: using AI without redesigning the process around it does not solve a bottleneck, it just relocates it. Training the next generation to understand that distinction, not just how to prompt a model but how to rethink a workflow, is what he sees as the real value of programs like this one.
What This Means For The Industry
As AI becomes more embedded in mortgage servicing, both executives expect document processing and data extraction to keep getting faster and more accurate, alongside more industry-specific, custom-trained models. But the long-term shift they describe is bigger than software. It is about who is equipped to build and manage that technology responsibly as it takes on more of the industry’s work.
For a sector that spent years being cautious, even skeptical, about AI, investing early in the people who understand how to build it well may end up mattering as much as the technology itself.
About Outamation
Outamation is a leader in automation and digital transformation for mortgage servicing, origination, and other regulated industries, reimagining document-heavy workflows to deliver measurable, compliant business outcomes. As the first U.S. mortgage technology company certified to ISO/IEC 42001, and backed by ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, Outamation pairs bold innovation with the governance regulated operations demand. Learn more at www.outamation.com.
This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.
Disclosure: Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.
Media Contact Information
Heather Hook | KeyCrew Media | [email protected]
