The need for upskilling in the era of AI

Loss of jobs due to the advent of new technology is a tale as old as time. For instance, just as motor engines made horse-drawn carriages redundant, automated switchboard systems also made switchboard operators redundant. And those are just two quick examples that come to the mind. Technology, for this very reason, is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it helps achieve efficiency and consistency and save time, but on the other, it causes a bit of unemployment—a phenomenon so pervasive that it has a category of its own, called technological unemployment.

Similarly, while new technology leads to job losses, it also frees up time that workers can invest in learning some other new skill or pursuing their own ventures. The latest technological boom that's going to lead to unemployment in the foreseeable future—or at least make a few job roles redundant—is none other than AI and automation.

Let's look at a few survey findings:

• A recent MIT study reveals that ChatGPT helped workers increase their productivity by 37%.
• A recent report by Valoir says that one in four workers are very worried that their job will be replaced by AI in the next year, and that employees saw the greatest opportunity for co-workers’ replacement by AI in human resources, IT, and finance.
• Similarly, a McKinsey report says that globally, up to 375 million people may need to learn an entirely new occupation.
• According to a recent report by the WEF, employers estimate that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years.
• The same WEF report also states that six in 10 workers will require training before 2027, but only half of workers are assessed to have access to adequate training opportunities today.

All these findings cement the fact that AI is here, and here to stay. The only way today's workers can safeguard their jobs is by using AI capabilities to improve their own performance, or learn different skills and change their career tracks accordingly.

Today, automation and AI can help employees save time and effort in many ways, but can't be a like-for-like replacement for a human being. For example, a chatbot can help customers perform simple step-by-step processes like changing a password or suspending a subscription service; but if a customer's request is complex, it'll most certainly require a human support agent to fulfill it. However, in a few other industries, especially IT, finance, and HR, the possibility of AI tools replacing a significant number of workers is much higher.

Even when AI wasn't a threat, it was only employees who kept themselves updated about the advancements in their respective industries and continuously tried to innovate and improve who excelled in their jobs. With AI entering the foray, the need to improve one's skills has only become more widespread and urgent. Workers can't afford to be complacent, because the next big AI-driven development in their own industry might just be lurking around in the corner. We can see what ChatGPT can do for marketing and IT teams, as well as what DALL-E and Midjourney are capable of. Even robots have started performing surgery, if you didn't know!

This being the reality today, it's vital that workers start focusing on upskilling themselves before it's too late. And since it's the humans that make the growth of an organization a reality, it's equally important for management teams to come up with structured programs for upskilling employees.

Management teams can provide employees with the means to explore their current job roles much more deeply and/or give them the opportunity to try their hands at a completely different function or role to see how they fare. Sometimes the results of the latter experiment are astounding, because someone from a different job role might see things very differently and dramatically alter the way things are done. Either way, investing in people is bound to be as lucrative as investing in new technologies.

Ultimately, things change as time marches on, and the use of new technology in running businesses is not going to stop any time soon. Just like how organizations that spot trends ahead of time and change direction are the ones that flourish, it's individuals who have the foresight and openness to embrace change who can add value to their organization and even mankind at large.