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Humans are no match for machines when it comes to productivity. But that doesn’t stop bosses from trying to get them there.
Andy Byrd, CEO of education giant Pearson Education, said reskilling and upskilling is good business. of fortune Peter Vanham at last week’s Fortune Connect executive session. Traditionally, that means learning new skills and mastering new areas of study that are fundamental to Pearson. Originally known for its dozens of textbook publications, the world’s largest education company now offers educational courseware, assessments, and a range of digital teaching modules.
Pearson currently offers a vast array of learning programs designed to educate employees about the diverse uses and applications of artificial intelligence. Why Pivot? Bird says most employees have no choice but to add her AI fluency to their repertoire.
“In many ways, technology and AI are advancing faster than real life,” Byrd says. “We are struggling to keep up. The impact of that on us as individuals and as a company is the need to continually reskill and upskill.”
The “we” in question is very broad. Byrd said employees in a variety of sectors, including government and healthcare, have opted in to Pearson’s online courses. Program titles include “Introduction to Machine Learning,” “Pragmatic AI: An Introduction to Cloud-Based Machine Learning,” and “Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving.”
Of course, these services mean Bird has good reason to advocate for upskilling its employees. But he is right about one thing. AI development is progressing rapidly, faster than most people can keep up. In 2022 alone, OpenAI launched his now ubiquitous ChatGPT, and Google launched DeepMind, which predicts the structure of nearly every known protein in the human body.
But acting too quickly can lead to potential disaster. More than a third of experts said unchecked growth could lead to a “nuclear catastrophe.”
Needless to say, it’s important to be aware of AI (if not expertise), even in low-risk situations. Consider a bank where leaders recognize the need to move from retail banking to digital banking. “or [shift] Then all the retail bankers and branch cashiers would be unnecessary,” Byrd explained, evoking a general, albeit overblown, fear that robots will take jobs. “Then they will lose their jobs and hire cybersecurity professionals.”
But the decision would be costly for banks, not to mention lost productivity, Byrd said. “If we reduce the analog workforce, we must increase the digital workforce.”
AI has widened the skills gap. Can it be narrowed down as well?
Recently, the gap between the skills companies are looking for and the skills employees are training for has widened across sectors, partly due to the rapid adoption of AI. According to a Dell Technologies survey, more than a third (37%) of Gen Zers feel their education does not equip them with the digital skills they need to advance their careers. 56% of Gen Z believe they have very basic education in digital skills, or none at all.
Workers aren’t the only ones who might miss the ship. Leveraging skills at scale requires the help of machine learning and AI, writes Pete Schlump, his vice president, chief marketing officer and enterprise growth executive at Workday. luck. If a company were to survey its entire workforce and try to determine current and future skill needs, it would be an “impossible task” to do so using spreadsheets and other static, labor-intensive tools. “is.
Pearson’s tools and modules can identify individuals in need of reskilling and jobs that need modification. The goal is always to add features, not to cut jobs. “For example, if you’re an accountant, you already have 25% of the skills he needs to be a data scientist,” Byrd says. “So a little reskilling is enough. You have some basic core competencies to get you from job A to job B.”
These core competencies are ideally interesting human skills that robots cannot replace. Those are the words of his CEO, Satya Nadella, at Microsoft, which has invested heavily in OpenAI. Done right, AI in the workplace doesn’t threaten the creative. Nadella argues that “the drudgery” should be removed.
But the commercial emergence of AI is already transforming some workplaces and resetting productivity expectations. An April 2023 study from MIT and Stanford University found that using generative AI tools like ChatGPT boosted employee productivity by nearly 14%, with novice or low-skilled employees outperforming otherwise. You may be able to work 35% faster than with Some say ChatGPT and its likes could soon rival the Internet. It’s no wonder that a recent report from Microsoft found that mastering the basics and applications of AI is critical to getting jobs in the future.
We hope that AI applications will continue to be rational and restrained. Better to outsource the rote paperwork than to plunge into nuclear war.
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com
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5 Side Jobs That Could Earn $20,000+ A Year While Working From Home
Want to earn extra cash?APY for this CD is currently 5.15%
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This is how much you need to earn per year to comfortably buy a $600,000 house
