Unlocking The Future: Your Essential Guide To Skills And Roles In The World Of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The debate regarding the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on human life is still in its infancy. Opinions are often polarised and quite deterministic. A segment of professionals contends that AI will replace numerous jobs or displace a significant portion of the workforce. Another group of professionals disagrees with this prediction, suggesting instead that it will disrupt specific jobs and certain functions within a job while necessitating workforce upskilling for AI-integrated job tasks. AI-transformation represents a further extension of technological integration that has taken place over the past few decades.
Before forming an opinion, it is essential to understand the potentialities and limitations of AI. According to the Future of Jobs Report 2023 by the World Economic Forum, generative AI represents a radical shift in technology usage. AI technologies have the capability to create original content, derive insights from vast amounts of data, translate languages with near-human accuracy, and potentially even make complex decisions. The report suggests that businesses aiming to adopt AI in their operations will engage with text, image, and voice processing technologies in the following four ways:
- High potential for automation: This implies that certain job tasks will be fully performed by AI, requiring little to no human intervention, such as management analysts and statistical assistants.
- High potential for augmentation: This refers to AI being used to enhance human productivity, with human-led operations, as seen in roles like editors and graphic designers.
- Low potential for automation or augmentation: It suggests that AI will have no significant impact on task performance, and operations will remain in the hands of humans, as seen in roles such as healthcare workers and educational career counsellors.
- Unaffected (i.e., non-language tasks): AI will not play a role in performing job tasks, for example, carpenters and dishwashers.
Business organisations and their employees need to identify which of their job tasks require skilling and upskilling in AI, which components of a job task are to be automated, and which ones are to be augmented. They also need to determine the skills required in their business environment to prepare their workforce for AI-led job performance. The Future of Jobs Report 2023 has identified a range of skills for the workforce. Some of them are as follows:
1: Abstract reasoning: When tasks are augmented by AI, they require skills in abstract reasoning to analyse patterns of information, resolve problems in the information, and deliver them without errors in real-world situations.
2: Complex critical thinking and problem-solving: This is the process of resonating with information dealt with in jobs with high potential for AI augmentation, such as insurance underwriters, bioengineers, biomedical engineers, mathematicians, and editors.
3: Analytical thinking: AI augments information from a network of knowledge and information, but the reliability of this information requires analytical thinking to break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable parts, and to use logic and reasoning to evaluate different solutions.
4: Communication: Communication skills are required to interact with AI systems and negotiate with other humans involved in the AI environment. They require skills to design customer experiences from the perspective of service orientation.
5: Collaboration: Certain tasks require the processing of digital resources or the involvement of more than one worker, especially when the tasks are complex, uncertain, or dynamic. Skills are needed to understand the capabilities and limitations of AI and coordinate decisions about the tasks with required support.
6: Creative thinking: AI-augmented tasks require the incorporation of creative insights from their field of expertise. For example, a software engineer needs to understand various levels of the finished product and use their innovative abilities to complete the task.
7: Leadership and social influence: Business organizations will require their workforce to have leadership and social influence to empathise with and represent users” experiences in the finished products and services.
8: Motivation and self-awareness: The organization requires its workforce to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and to have the motivation to work towards achieving their goals.
9: Life-long learning: Organizations require their workforce to become active learners in their knowledge and training systems so that they can meet innovative practices and new challenges.
AI transformation is coming, as Benjamin Disraeli says “Change is inevitable. Change is Constant.” This is a great chance for those who are open to this change. We need to be aware and prepared to seize these opportunities.
