If you spend any time on the web, you know that artificial intelligence (AI) features are popping up more and more. With this explosion of AI, many are worried about how it will impact their jobs.
This April, a press release from IBM revealed that a group of major tech companies planned to provide new training for workers as artificial intelligence becomes a more ubiquitous presence. It said this training would benefit more than 95 million individuals.
“The AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium is led by Cisco and joined by Accenture, Eightfold, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft, and SAP,” said the group’s website. So far, it has worked to identify in-demand Information and Communication Technology (ICT) jobs, analyzed how generative AI will impact those jobs and published insights for people who want to reskill and upskill to remain relevant in their careers.
“Consortium members have established forward thinking goals with skills development and training programs to positively impact over 95 million individuals around the world over the next 10 years,” said the IBM press release.
In mid-July, Forbes referenced a ZDNET article on the consortium when addressing how education and the workforce might be shaped by AI in the future. Per the report, “the news this spring was encouraging for people seeking to reinvent their careers to grab middle-class jobs and a shot at economic security.”
NBC News reported this week that colleges and universities have started to market undergraduate AI degrees to students. Reid Simmons, director of the AI major at Carnegie Mellon (where the first B.S. in artificial intelligence was launched in 2018) said most of his students went on to work for Big Tech companies.
Mehmet Deniz Birlikci, graduated with a B.S. in Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon this past May. He’s joining Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence division as an engineer.
“I was really viewing AI as a new computing paradigm which is a lot more flexible than hard coding rules,” Birlikci explained.
College courses aren’t the only way to receive training in AI. The AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium site lists different training options organized by job specialty, and Amazon Web Services training is available on YouTube.
This week, Meta announced that it would start to roll out its AI Studio in the U.S. It described the studio as “a place for people to create, share and discover AIs,” that is built with Llama 3.1 “and allows creators to build an AI as an extension of themselves to reach more fans.”
A day after the announcement, The New York Times reported on how AI might impact white collar jobs. In particular, it focused on creative jobs in Hollywood, which were the subject of strikes last summer.
Thomas R. Moore said he’s worried about his decades-long career as picture editor on network television shows.
“If AI could put together a credible version of the show for a first cut, it could eliminate one-third of our workdays,” he said, citing technology like the video-making software Sora. “We’ll become electronic gig workers.”
An essay published in Noema this February argued that fear about AI ruining work in the future is misplaced, though a Gallup poll found that 75% of U.S. adults believe AI will lead to fewer jobs. Instead, the essay said AI should be able to help workers with an impending labor shortage fueled by falling birth rates in the U.S.
That’s what Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, said it aims to do with its Voice AI technology in a press release issued Wednesday.
“The rollout of Voice AI technology in Taco Bell, currently in more than 100 Taco Bell U.S. drive-thrus across 13 states, is designed to enhance back-of-house operations for team members and elevate the order experience for consumers,” it said. “Benefits include easing task load for team members, improving order accuracy, providing a consistent, friendly experience, and reducing wait times, while driving profitable growth for Taco Bell, Yum! Brands and their franchisees.”
However, a previous AI experiment at fast food chain McDonald’s showed that things don’t always go to plan with AI. Anyone who has made a Google search recently probably knows that as well.
According to IBM’s April press release, “further details will be shared in the coming months,” about the consortium and its findings. The companies hope to continue offering practical insights for how we can keep moving as AI keeps growing.