Despite the hand wringing over AI and generative AI’s potential to decimate the workforce, the technologies present an opportunity for a major skills recalibration, shifting emphasis away from repetitive tasks toward critical thinking and interpersonal communications.
There is no question that the advent of AI changes the tenor of work. Employers need to reexamine their talent bench and elevate their training game while employees must be open and adaptable to upskilling, reskilling, and exploring non-traditional job opportunities.
The World Economic Forum estimates that 375 million people will be in need of reskilling by 2025; if this skills gap isn’t closed, approximately $11.5 trillion in GDP could be lost. GenAI, in particular, will have significant impact: Ernst & Young LLP estimates that 66% of employment (the equivalent of 104 million jobs) and 59% of occupations will have high or moderate exposure to GenAI. Meanwhile, its recent AI Anxiety in Business Survey showed employees have concerns about the technology. Research found that those fears included making certain jobs obsolete (75%) and negative impacts on pay (72%).
Our experts network discussed these issues, giving their thoughts on how workforce skillsets will be reshaped by the coming transformation.
As GenAI gains traction for automating digital content creation, developing code, and analyzing data, in-demand skills will shift from knowing how to write copy or code to understanding business value and evaluating and improving accuracy.
“Businesses will need more people with human soft skills and AI acumen, including communications, collaboration, leadership, creativity, and strategic thinking to continuously transform their organization’s business model and products,” says Isaac Sacolick (@nyike), president of StarCIO and author of Digital Trailblazer.
In the short term, AI is already disrupting skills related to data analysis, research, language fluency, and analytical problem solving.
As it evolves and models improve, the technology is expected to surpass human capabilities in once unthinkable areas such as critical thinking, creative innovation, and active learning.
Humans are likely to maintain an edge over AI in areas like leadership and decision making, but even there, the potential for the technology to catch up underscores the need for proactive reskilling in areas that enhance human-computer interaction.
“That means while the world is focused on the new technical skills of today (i.e., prompt engineering), humans will also need to learn interpersonal skills between a human and computer to be more digitally fluent with AI and how it enhances their own personal capabilities,” says Jonathan Sears, global technology leader for EY Global People Advisory Services.
Leveling the playing field
Because AI has been trained on humankind’s collective knowledge, that information is more immediately accessible than at any point in history.
This means specialization of skills and knowledge becomes more important than being well-rounded in the age of technologies like GenAI, according to Rich Heimann, director of AI at SIXGEN.
“Workers need to specialize—a jack-of-all-trades, master of none is less valuable today than pre-ChatGPT,” Heimann says.
That doesn’t mean experts will be immune to having to reevaluate and potentially reimagine their skill sets.
“Generative technology will alter the nature of many problems and change the required competencies for many jobs, creating new skills gaps and paradoxically, new labor shortages,” Heimann says. “The best advice for long-term career success is on-going skills development focusing on T-shaped skills.”
New graduates entering the market with enhanced skills will also heighten competition and put reskilling in the spotlight.
Peter Nichol (@PeterBNichol), chief technology officer at OROCA Innovations, says skillsets are changing.
Today, many newcomers enter the workplace with advanced skills, including competency in Python or R Programming for data analysis, the ability to use SQL to query relational databases, and knowledge of visual analytics tools for advanced data discovery and insights.
“This increases the pressure on existing employees to take action and upskill to stay competitive,” adds Nichol.
As the technologies become more accessible and empower legions of citizen developers, those building AI models and applications need to be cognizant about focusing on the end-consumer rather than any technical wizardry, cautions Sandeep Sacheti, executive vice president for customer information management and operational excellence at Wolters Kluwer.
“Build solutions with domain experts and bring proprietary data to life to deliver value to customers in a sustained manner using best-suited technologies like gen AI and contextual inquiry techniques,” Sacheti explains. “This makes solutions easy to use every day.”
Lifelong learning will also become a critical career requirement as employees and their managers struggle to keep up with rapidly changing advancements and evolving AI technologies. Many will fall behind because they lack the basic technical and strategy skills, and this has the potential to impede successful AI deployments, contends Will Kelly (@willkelly), a writer focused on DevOps and the cloud.
“I expect a generation of AI projects to falter not because of the technology, but because of the people,” Kelly says. “Especially executives, many of whom are `above learning’ and can’t cut through the hype to develop a coherent AI strategy rooted in business reality.”
When workers develop skills that complement AI—for example, critical thinking and problem solving—they bring higher-level decision making to the table, thus have a better shot at getting hired and long-term job security.
Moreover, as AI reshapes business, there will be a flurry of new jobs created in fields like cybersecurity and AI ethics, notes Scott Schober (@ScottBVS), president and CEO at Berkeley Varitronics Systems Inc. “We all need to embrace technology and be adaptable to AI initiatives so we can survive and ultimately, thrive in the new technological landscape,” he says.
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The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.