How to prepare for employment in the age of artificial intelligence | TNW

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"For centuries, humans have been fretting over “technological unemployment” or the loss of jobs caused by technological change. Never has this sentiment been accentuated more than it is today, at the cusp of the next industrial revolution." argues Ben Dickson, founder of TechTalks. 

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With developments in artificial intelligence continuing at a chaotic pace, fears of robots ultimately replacing humans are increasing.

However, while AI continues to master an increasing number of tasks, we’re still decades away from human jobs going extinct. With AI finding its way into more and more domains, the demand for tech talent is growing.

There’s an unprecedented shortage of programmers, data scientists, cybersecurity experts and IT specialists, among others. And we can only bridge this widening gap if we help the workforce adapt to the jobs of the future. Interestingly, AI can play a crucial role in this regard.

Here is how we can smooth the transition to the age of Artificial Intelligence.

Education  

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Teaching and learning has been the centerpiece of the human society’s evolution. Education in this day and age has to reflect the upheavals overcoming the socio-economic landscape.

This means we need more focus on computer science in schools and academic institutions. This will help prepare future generations to fill tech vacancies.

Governments and the private sector must also play a more active role in helping the workforce acquire tech skills. This includes people currently who are filling job roles that will likely become subject to automation in coming years.

The Obama Administration’s TechHire Initiative is an example of governmental effort to put more people into tech jobs. The program is meant to help people with academic and technical hurdles to shortcut their way to well-paying tech jobs.

Other notable developments include the establishment of learning centers such as Coursera, Codeacademy, Big Data University and Microsoft’s edX. These online platforms provide users with free tools and massively open online courses (MOOCs) to learn top-demand tech skills...

Assisting humans in tech jobs  
One of the main hurdles for entrance into tech jobs is the sophisticated level of skills, experiment and knowhow required. The same goes for other fields where talent and expertise is in high demand, such as medicine.

For instance, the cybersecurity industry is currently struggling with a shortage of one million skilled workers. Meanwhile the amount of time and effort required to train a security analyst is overwhelming.

Fortunately, AI-powered security tools can downsize the effort required by security experts in maintaining the integrity of IT systems. By learning to analyze and flag network events or process behavior, tools such as MIT’s AI2 and IBM’s Watson for Security enable security analysts to become more productive and efficient in fighting cyber attacks.
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Source: TNW