55% of leaders say they are concerned about having enough talent to fill roles in the coming year as AI skills become more relevant than ever, new research shows.
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According to the 2024 Microsoft Work Trends Index, although many professionals (45%) fear that AI will replace their jobs, the majority (55%) report a lack of talent to fill leadership roles. I am concerned.
71% [of leaders] They say they would rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.
2024 Microsoft Work Trends Index
There is a talent shortage, and as a result there is a huge opportunity for those who can learn AI skills, with 71 percent of corporate leaders saying they would hire a more experienced candidate without AI skills. Preference will be given to candidates with less experience. Reports.
While AI has been the talk of the town since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, large companies have been slow to integrate the technology and help expand their talent pool.
In the modern workplace there is a gap between what seems necessary and what seems possible.
According to a Microsoft study, although 79 percent of executives believe their company must adopt AI to remain competitive, the pressure to generate an immediate return on investment has slowed the AI transition.
As a result, employees around the world are taking matters into their own hands, learning to use AI tools on their own. While mastering AI at home can lead to a competitive edge, it also creates some problems.
Experts say the biggest problem with mastering AI at home is that many people don't know how to do it safely and effectively.
To the naked eye, there are many “free” AI resources online such as ChatGPT and other tools using large language models (LLMs), but experts say these tools are not actually free. LLMs are algorithms that can identify, summarize, translate, predict, and generate information using large data sets.
“Nothing in this world is free. Your data is what you're trading,” said Liu. “You must not use your company's data or any of your personal data. [when using free online AI tools]”
Doing so could put sensitive personal or company data at risk. Part of mastering AI tools is learning how to do it safely and effectively.
According to Liew, the top skill to learn today is to effectively communicate with existing AI-powered LLMs. OpenAI's Chat GPT, Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini employ LLM.
You have to give the AI a lot of context — treat the AI like a very hard-working intern who will occasionally make mistakes.
Lawrence Liu
Director of AI Innovation at AI Singapore
“People misuse ChatGPT — because it looks just like a Google search,” Liu told CNBC Make It.
When working with an LLM, the key is to be specific in your notation.
“You have to give AI a lot of context — treat AI like a very hard-working intern who will occasionally make mistakes … if you think about it, if you [asking] Intern to do something, it won't be a sentence. Interns might be scratching their heads about what to do,” she said.
According to Liu, the best way to improve AI tools at home is to use them. With practice, you can learn how to give LLM more descriptive cues that will help produce the results you want.
“You still need to know. [your domain] very well [but] The mundane part of looking at 20 files is now done by an AI system – imagine when you could flip. [work] At that kind of pace — the kind of change that can happen,” Liu said.
While AI tools may still seem exotic, by next year, “it will be like knowing how to use your spell checker in Microsoft Word,” Liu said.
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