In the last few years, artificial intelligence has become an inevitable part of different business organizations. There has been a significant change in the way businesses have responded to different tools and techniques of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning in the pre and post pandemic era. The trajectory that artificial intelligence and machine learning have traced in the last few years is testimony to the fact that AI will dominate the future technology market. It is in this context that we need to get ready to supply the necessary workforce to the technological market that is slowly beginning to take shape. Various types of artificial intelligence engineering courses will have to be introduced in the short run. In addition to this, long-term curriculum development programs for incorporation of AI into the learning pedagogies will prove to be critical. A platform will also need to be established to provide training to the workforce that is zealous of getting into the AI market.
The AI workforce dichotomy
With the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution, there was skepticism, suspicion, confusion as well as celebration about the upcoming change. Many businesses found it difficult to react to the changes that artificial intelligence brought into the data market. There were also some businesses that rapidly benefited from the technological revolution. Moreover, there was a large chunk of the workforce that was suspicious about the advent of artificial intelligence into the industrial ecosystem. A significant proportion of the workforce was of the opinion that artificial intelligence would gradually intrude and invade manual skills and lead to automation of everything.
As artificial intelligence started to benefit the business sector, this suspicion about the encroachment into the domain of workforce became even more amplified.
Resolving the dichotomy
Different types of programs related to artificial intelligence have helped in resolving the workforce dichotomy. In fact, artificial intelligence has not only allowed reskilling of the existing workforce but has also created a large number of jobs in the existing sectors. For instance, artificial intelligence has given birth to 12% of the jobs in the manufacturing sector, 28% of the jobs in the E-Commerce sector and 48% of the jobs in the domain of cyber security. In this way, artificial intelligence has not only improved productivity but has also improved the efficiency of the existing workforce.
AI in cybersecurity: A case study
In the present times, data has become the oil and currency by virtue of its relevance to a large number of sectors. It is not a hidden fact that the increasing spree of digitisation has put the data of millions of customers over the cloud networks. Thousands of transactions are being carried out every second and sensitive data is being channelised through data pipelines. It is in this context that the domain of cyber security has become even more important than before. Artificial intelligence has led to the creation of more than 66% of new jobs in this sector alone. AI architects, machine learning engineers, cloud architects are all working as cyber security professionals for leading security organizations. The world economic forum has already pointed out that cyber security would become one of the most important research domains in the coming times as all our sensitive data needs to be effectively safeguarded. As such, this domain would also become a hotbed of recruitment for professionals who have a variety of encryption skills.
Metaverse
In the present times, the boundaries between work and play have been effectively minimized and negated. Credit goes to different types of platforms that are developing to amalgamate the concept of work and play in the digital environment. Metaverse is one such concept that allows a large number of users to work and play on the same interface. In this way, metaverse provides amazing experiences to the users worldwide by reinterpreting the meaning of workstations across the digital world.
One of the most amazing yet unnoticed and unexplored applications of metaverse is its potential to create thousands of new jobs and provide employment to young people. Needless to mention, metaverse can serve as the interactive hub between employers and employees across the globe. It can provide a unanimous workstation for those people who want to indulge in creative and lucrative job prospects and opportunities.
The way ahead
We can conclude that artificial intelligence will not encroach upon the employment opportunities of existing workforce but will create new and exciting employment workstations in the times to come.
