The ICT Workforce Consortium suggests that success in this new AI era comes with organisations creating frameworks and providing actionable insights for their workforce
A report from the ICT Workforce Consortium reveals how AI is transforming the most in-demand jobs in the technology industry that will create innovation
AI is continuing to disrupt the business landscape with its transformative power, with the workforce experiencing the most impact as manual tasks become automated.
Within the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, a recent report by the ICT Workforce Consortium highlights the profound impact of AI on job roles and what skills are needed to revolutionise businesses in an AI-driven landscape. Notably, it reveals 92% of IT jobs will see a high or moderate transformation due to advances in AI.
Companies part of the ICT Workforce Consortium:
- Accenture
- Cisco
- eightfold.ai
- IBM
- Indeed
- Intel
- Microsoft
- SAP
With this in mind, the report cements the importance of businesses, governments and workers adapting to the changes AI could bring, predominantly through reskilling and upskilling initiatives.
“Understanding how AI intersects with ICT roles is crucial in bridging the digital divide,” comments Francine Katsoudas, Cisco’s Executive Vice President. “[Our] ongoing work is driven by our commitment to a more inclusive future, giving more people access to an AI-fuelled world and enabling broader economic opportunity.”
47 ICT job roles poised for ‘AI transformation’
The ICT Workforce Consortium suggests that success in this new AI era comes with organisations creating frameworks and providing actionable insights for their workforce. By investing in training programmes and fostering a culture of learning, businesses can embrace AI and unlock greater potential.
Technology and AI are already playing a major role in the ongoing debate over the future of work. With AI already creating a new division of labour between humans and machines, the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that increased AI and automation will disrupt 85 million jobs globally before 2025 – in addition to creating 97 million new job roles.
This is suggested in the report, with the Consortium identifying 47 distinct ICT job roles that are set to be transformed as a result of AI advancements. It suggests that the largest changes will be recognised in mid-level (40%) and entry-level (37%) jobs, on account of certain roles and skill sets becoming obsolete.
As a result, the following skills are expected to rise in importance:
- AI ethics and responsible AI
- AI literacy
- Prompt engineering
- Large language model (LLM) architecture
- Agile methodologies
- Data analytics
- Machine learning
- Retrieval augmented generation (RAG)
- TensorFlow
- Natural language processing (NLP)
Integrating AI into the ICT sector is expected to automate routine tasks, enhance data analysis and better enable advanced problem-solving capabilities. Whilst this will create new opportunities for innovation, it raises questions over how ready the current workforce is to fully embrace AI.
According to the Consortium, traditional data management, content creation, documentation maintenance and basic programming will become less relevant. As AI continues to evolve, reskilling initiatives will become a lifeline for businesses who seek to remain competitive.
ICT Workforce Consortium: Responsible AI is ‘imperative’
By leveraging AI-driven educational tools, learning experiences can be tailored to individual needs and learning styles.
To that end, 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.
Member goals include:
- Cisco training 25 million people with cybersecurity and digital skills by 2032
- IBM upskilling 30 million individuals by 2030 in digital skills, including two million in AI
- Intel empowering more than 30 million people with AI skills for current and future jobs by 2030
- Microsoft training and certifying 10 million people in digital skills by 2025
- SAP upskilling two million people worldwide by 2025
- Google announcing US$130m in funding to support AI training and skills worldwide
“Responsible AI usage is imperative for both individuals and organisations. I am optimistic that the consortium’s efforts and the insights from this report will exemplify the effectiveness of public-private partnerships aimed at providing workers with a path for rapid upskilling and training opportunities,” says Ryan Oakes, Global Health and Public Service Industry Lead at Accenture.
The Consortium highlights that organisations must demonstrate a commitment to responsible data practices by investing in data governance training to ensure fairness, transparency and accountability when it comes to AI. This will be important for businesses building trust and more positive and innovative outcomes.
