You don’t have to be a data scientist or artificial intelligence developer to feel the impact that AI is having on career opportunities. AI is opening paths in many and often unexpected ways — and a rudimentary knowledge of the power of the technology is now a must.
Succeeding in business — across all occupations — will require at least some working knowledge of AI, industry experts concur. “In today’s global business environment, you’d be hard-pressed to find many roles that don’t require digital skills to complete daily tasks,” says Maureen Lonergan, vice president for training and certification at AWS.
A study out of Gallup and AWS finds “nearly two-thirds of U.S. employers believe emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotics—will become a standard part of their business in the near future,” she adds, citing an Gallup survey commissioned by AWS. ‘For both technical and non-technical staff, it’s an ideal time to build a basic understanding of how AI is being applied to real world applications.”
Similarly, a recent survey of 31,000 executives out of Microsoft finds 82% say their employees will need new skills to be prepared for the growth of AI. ‘Working alongside AI—using natural language—will be as inherent to how we work as the internet and the PC,” the report’s authors point out.
Skills such as “critical thinking and analytical judgment, complex problem solving, and creativity and originality are new core competencies—and not just for technical roles or AI experts,” the Microsoft survey shows. “It’s essential that employees learn when to leverage AI, how to write great prompts, how to evaluate creative work, and how to check for bias. As AI reshapes work, human-AI collaboration will be the next transformational work pattern—and the ability to work iteratively with AI will be a key skill for every employee.”
On the LinkedIn career network, “there are 33x as many posts mentioning topics like generative AI and GPT than there were one year ago,” the report adds. “While it’s still early days, this shift will expand opportunities, create new roles, and augment productivity,” Karin Kimbrough, chief economist at LinkedIn, states in the report.
The AI space “is evolving at a pace and speed we have never seen,” agrees Steve Knox, vice president of global talent acquisition at Ceridian. “Career goals will require greater agility, a learner mindset, and an openness to change. Everyone will need to be open to learning how to use AI to make their jobs more productive and efficient, including learning how the capabilities of tools like ChatGPT can help an employee do administrative elements of their job more efficiently.”
In addition, Knox continues, “managers will need to focus on how they can redesign their teams’ tasks to allow the automation to do more repeatable and administrative tasks to free up time for their employees to lean into the human aspects that automation cannot manage.”
The growth of cloud and AI and machine learning “presents an opportunity for people in both technical and non-technical roles to grow their skills and expertise in these in-demand areas,” Lonergan adds. “There are simply not enough people with the skills employers are looking for. It’s an ideal time to build a basic understanding of how AI is being applied to real world applications – to boost career and earning potential.”
At the same time, Knox says, “soft skills that AI cannot replicate will be key in the future. Things like critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, or EQ skills will be paramount to success in a world of automation. Beyond that, team-building capabilities and leadership skills are going to be critical and even more so in a global virtual hybrid world. And lastly, particularly coming out of the pandemic, demonstrating empathy will be a significant skill that cannot be replicated via AI.”
The impact of AI on various professional and management roles will be significant, Lonergan says. “AI will increase the need for new multidisciplinary teams of professionals with expertise in data analysis, machine learning, software engineering, cloud computing, and project management,” she says.
The current rapid growth of generative AI is exciting as “it is such a new space and developing so rapidly,” says Knox. “Provided we have parameters and guidelines in place to help govern how we use this technology, it will be fascinating to see how it might help make our jobs easier, drive more efficiency and improve productivity in this new world of work.”
(Disclosure: I have conducted research work for AWS, mentioned in this article, over the past year as part of my consulting practice.}
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