Concerns about artificial intelligence’s potential effects have grown in recent months. There may indeed be negative consequences on jobs, even though technology undoubtedly can improve access to education, aid in the detection and treatment of medical ailments, and even help fight climate change. As the specialists consider the possible consequences, there seems to be one group that is more at ease with the technology and its implications than the others.
The management consulting firm Arthur D. Little released a report earlier this month stating that the leaders of the biggest corporations in the world are embracing AI and investing in providing their staff with the necessary training to take advantage of the new technologies. The authors observe that the use of AI has increased significantly over the previous year, with 47% of executives expressing a strategic attitude toward AI and 96% of executives claiming to have implemented an AI strategy within at least one department of their firm. Nevertheless, only 13% of them have implemented a thorough AI plan for the entire firm, indicating that they are still in the process of “transforming” to properly comprehend the implications of AI and incorporate it into all areas of the business. According to our experience, significant structural and workforce change is needed to effectively benefit from AI, and this transition will take time. The transition from a strategic view to a plan and its subsequent implementation present significant hurdles, as the authors note in Positive In An Uncertain World: Confident CEOs Reskill Companies For AI-Driven Growth.
According to Arthur D. Little’s report, CEOs are mostly employing AI to improve key activities by boosting efficacy and efficiency, such as through automation. Four out of the seven industries have efficiency as the top use case, which suggests that businesses are still in the early stages of their AI adoption.
Even so, AI is already having a significant and direct impact on the abilities necessary for success, even if it isn’t yet altering corporate structures. CEOs think that to get the most out of AI, they must completely revamp their workforces. Compared to just 13% in 2023, just over half of them now perceive a high or very strong demand for their personnel to reskill. Furthermore, it seems that the conventional methods of learning new abilities are no longer as relevant as they once were. According to the survey, CEOs stated that in 2023 they relied on outside resources, chiefly headhunters and collaboration with academic institutions, to give them access to fresh talent and competencies that would spur growth. The last year has seen a change in emphasis, with the majority now focusing on internal academies to provide talent and skills. This trend may be caused by a variety of factors, but one major one is the difficulty in locating AI talent due to a global skills shortage and the realization that technical knowledge must be combined with business understanding to produce results that are specific to the goals of individual companies.
Sheldon Gilbert, the founder and CEO of Kura Labs, a nonprofit organization that trains individuals in “under-served communities” in computing intending to help them find employment, undoubtedly holds this opinion. He contends that the issue of employers lacking the necessary abilities existed even before the development of AI. He claimed in a recent interview that engineering pipelines had been “woefully inadequate for the past 20 years” and that computer science curricula in many colleges had become “decoupled” from business demands over time. Consequently, “a whole generation of engineers is learning on the job.”
Though he believes it is more likely that people will be replaced by people who know how to use AI than by AI itself, he is not completely certain that AI will eventually replace people. However, he does think that AI is making businesses rethink their talent requirements. He stated, “They’re attempting to determine whether it will consume their lunch as a business model or how to make use of it.”
Companies are reevaluating whether traditional degrees are as important as they once were as part of this process. Gilbert believes that it’s time for employers to go outside of the typical sources of technical expertise, as more and more people find higher education to be too expensive. Naturally, this is where Kura Labs, which was the beneficiary of a donation made by philanthropist Mackenzie Scott earlier this year, comes in. Employers mention that they are seeking candidates with strong work ethics, a strong work ethic, a systems thinking approach, and problem-solving skills, but these qualities are not limited to recent college graduates. Gilbert says that those from less fortunate origins may even be more motivated than those who have grown up in more affluent circumstances because they are “equally distributed” among society.
Software developers who, in Gilbert’s words, “walked on water” are now concerned about their jobs as a result of this reevaluation in the technology industry. However, the implications go further. He notes that artificial intelligence (AI) has reversed the typical pattern of technology typically impacting “blue-collar” people. This is evident in the sharp fall in the number of positions available for recent graduates in industries like banking, accounting, and law.
