According to a new study, 55% of executives say they are concerned about having enough talent to fill roles in the coming year, as AI skills become more relevant than ever.
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Today’s winners are learning how to leverage artificial intelligence to stay competitive and relevant for both employees and businesses.
“AI is not going to replace you. You are going to be replaced by someone who uses AI to surpass you,” said Laurence Liew, director of AI innovation at AI Singapore, during a panel discussion at Salesforce’s World Tour Essentials event in Singapore. .
While many professionals (45%) fear AI will replace their jobs, the majority (55%) of executives are concerned about the lack of talent to fill jobs, according to the Microsoft Work Trends 2024 Index.
71% (of executives) say they would rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without these skills.
Microsoft Work Trends Index 2024
There is a talent shortage, and therefore a huge opportunity for people who can learn AI skills, with 71% of business leaders saying they would prefer a less experienced candidate with AI skills over one more experienced candidate without these skills, according to the report.
While AI has been in the news since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, large companies have been slow to integrate the technology and upskill their talent pools.
There is a gap in the modern workplace between what seems necessary and what seems achievable.
While 79% of executives believe their companies should adopt AI to remain competitive, pressure to generate immediate returns on investment has slowed the transition to AI, according to the Microsoft study.
As a result, employees around the world are taking matters into their own hands and learning how to use AI tools on their own. While honing AI skills at home can lead to a competitive advantage, it also poses some challenges.
The risks of self-learning AI
Experts say one of the biggest problems with honing AI skills at home is that many people don’t know how to do it safely and effectively.
To the naked eye, there are many “free” AI resources online, such as ChatGPT and other tools using large language models (LLM), but experts say these tools are not actually free . LLMs are algorithms that can identify, summarize, translate, predict and produce insights using huge data sets.
“There is nothing free in this world. Your data is the commodity you trade,” Liew said. “You should not use your company data or any of your own personal data (when using free online AI tools).”
This can put sensitive personal or company data at risk. Part of brushing up on AI tools is learning how to do it safely and effectively.
The essential AI skill
The main skill to learn today is to communicate effectively with existing AI-based LLMs, according to Liew. Open AI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s Gemini employ LLMs.
You need to give the AI a lot of context – treat the AI like a very hard-working intern who will make mistakes from time to time.
Laurence Liew
Director of AI Innovation at AI Singapore
“People use ChatGPT wrongly because it looks exactly like Google Search,” Liew told CNBC Make It.
When working with an LLM, the key is to be specific in your prompts.
“You have to give the AI a lot of context – treat the AI as a very hard-working intern who will make mistakes from time to time… If you think about it, if you (ask) an intern to do something, it won’t be a sentence. The intern would probably wonder what to do,” he said.
The best way to hone your skills with AI tools at home is to use them, according to Liew. Through practice, you can learn to populate the LLM with more descriptive instructions that will help you generate the desired result.
“You still need to know (your domain) very well (but) the mundane part of looking at 20 files is now done by the AI system – imagine when you can turn around (work) at that kind of speed – the type of transformation this can happen,” Liew said.
Although AI tools may still seem foreign, by next year, “it will be like knowing how to use your spell check in Microsoft Word,” Liew said.
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