Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2019 - 18

While artificial intelligence (AI)
may still be synonymous with
images of robots, it's becoming
pervasive in our daily lives,
from our personalized shopping
experiences on Amazon to
our individual entertainment
suggestions on Netflix. AI uses
our browsing and purchasing
histories to evaluate what
we
consume
and
make
recommendations accordingly.

understanding and leveraging the
latest emerging technologies. AI
will create roles such as AI and
machine learning specialists,
big data specialists, process
automation experts, information
security analysts, user experience
and human-machine interaction
designers, robotics engineers,
and
blockchain
specialists
- all of which did not exist a
decade ago.

At home, we take virtual assistants
like Alexa and Siri for granted.
We depend on them for traffic
reports, weather forecasts, the
latest news and even placing
Amazon orders. These services
use natural language processing
to understand and respond to
our requests.

The technological revolution
we have seen over the past 30
years has been unparalleled and
exponential, resulting in more
jobs and higher salaries. The
future is ever-changing, and what
felt impossible a decade ago is
now deemed a mundane part of
workers' everyday lives. As such,
there is no telling where science
will take us next ... or what the
next step for AI will be.

As we begin to transact more
digitally, AI and AI-driven chatbots
are instrumental in delivering
strong customer experiences.
Whether it's to process a return
on a retailer site, prequalify a
candidate for a job application
or answer questions about a
product, a chatbot is available
24/7 and can drive personalized
customer experiences.
In social and business environments
alike, AI is becoming engrained in our
daily lives.

Massive Labor
Market Churn
AI is set to drive a workforce
transformation that we haven't
seen since the advent of the
personal computer. While it will
eliminate 75 million jobs, AI will also
create more than 133 million jobs,
according to the World Economic
Forum: Future of Jobs report.
There will also be an accelerating
demand for a variety of wholly
new specialist roles related to

| 18

If We Could
Survive
Spreadsheets, We
Can Survive AI
The birth of spreadsheets reduced
the demand for bookkeepers
by more than 44% since 1985,
according to reporting by the
Wall Street Journal. However,
people who could "run numbers"
on the new software became hot
commodities. Since that year,
the number of accountants and
auditors has grown 41%, and the
number of financial managers
and management analysts has
almost quadrupled, to reach
2.1 million.
Just as spreadsheets reduced
costs and increased the demand
for calculations, machine learning
- the application of AI to large
data sets - will do the same for

predictions. However, unlike
spreadsheets, machine learning
doesn't yield exact answers;
it reduces uncertainty so that
domain specialists can make
evaluations accordingly.

"CLOSING THE
GLOBAL SKILLS
GAP WILL REQUIRE
COLLABORATION ACROSS
ECOSYSTEMS THAT SPAN
INDUSTRY, EDUCATION
AND GOVERNMENT
ENVIRONMENTS."
Even with the rapid advancement
of technology, nothing has
genuinely replaced humans or
made them secondary in the
world's hierarchy. Why? The
answer is simple: We live in
a human-made society. And
humans, being innately selfserving creatures, would never let
anything, technology or otherwise,
turn them into secondary citizens
within their creation. Although
machines may eventually take
over most jobs as we know them
today, it's safe to assume that
new job opportunities will arise
in the future, making up for the
lost livelihood.

New Work,
New Skills
As the nature of human work
changes
in
the
emerging

https://www.trainingindustry.com/articles/learning-technologies/leveraging-intelligent-assistants-for-just-in-time-learning/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/magazine/jan-feb-2019/the-role-of-chatbots-in-workplace-learning/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/wesurvived-spreadsheets-and-well-survive-ai-1501688765 https://www.wsj.com/articles/wesurvived-spreadsheets-and-well-survive-ai-1501688765 https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018 https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018

Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2019