AI + ML
It could just be a new “MS Word savvy person”
AI-pocalypse For job seekers wondering which AI skills to enhance, looking at employment data over the past year, the answer appears to be simple. Just learn how to use it.
CompTIA’s annual Cyberstate Workforce Report was released Monday. In addition to a wealth of useful job data, it contains evidence that dedicated AI professionals do not gain a significant advantage over the average skilled teleprompter when it comes to finding work.
Job openings for people with AI skills reached a record high last month, with about 125,000 job openings in the technology sector citing a need, the training and certification company said. CompTIA noted that these user-level skills could include everything from marketers using ChatGPT to help develop new languages to web developers using just a bit of AI to help generate or debug code.
“For almost every digital or knowledge worker, AI can be considered another tool in the workplace toolbelt,” the report states.
True AI professionals who specialize in engineers, model builders, architects, and other highly technical fields are certainly sought after and, in some cases, highly paid. CompTIA noted that employment dedicated to AI titles increased 75% year-over-year. But this is 75% of an already low number.
“This hiring typically occurs among large companies and represents a relatively small portion of overall technology hiring,” CompTIA said.
So there’s no reason to go down the path of software engineering and LLM expertise. AI jobs aren’t found in specialized fields like “build me a new LLM” or “connect this chatbot to this unformatted data and perform miracles for me,” but instead in specialized fields like “summarize my boss’ email for me” or “create a mockup of a marketing campaign with X, Y, and Z elements that no human can do.” “Can I use Copilot?” Not “Get me a new co-pilot.”
CompTIA doesn’t say what specific AI product expertise companies are looking for, but the trends are clear. AI skills are not the new “learning to code.” These are the next iterations of “Become proficient with MS Word.”
What else has happened in your tech career over the past year?
In addition to discovering how the application of AI skills is declining, CompTIA’s annual survey on technology employment also found other interesting data points worth highlighting.
Consider CompTIA’s Net Technician Employment data point. This data point separates technical employment into two categories that are often not accounted for in similar studies. One is employment in companies in the technology sector, which includes non-technical workers working in technology-related services, and the other is people in direct technical jobs.
CompTIA forecasts that internet technology jobs are likely to increase this year after years of decline in 2022 due to the post-COVID-19 hiring surge. Of that employment, CompTIA said technical occupations are expected to see a slight increase.
It’s unclear whether AI is impacting this rate, but it may be one reason why CompTIA predicts the technology workforce will grow twice as fast as the overall U.S. workforce over the next decade.
Of course, not all future roles will lend themselves to AI. A lot of it will have to do with protecting the system.
Technology jobs are expected to grow at about twice the rate of overall U.S. employment over the next decade. According to CompTIA, data science and analytics top the list, followed by cybersecurity analysis and engineering. Software Development and Engineering, Software QA and Testing, Web/UI/UX Design complete the forecast of which courses you will need to take as the demand for such jobs increases. ®
