If you’ve worked any length of time in tech, you know that roles constantly evolve. New tools and frameworks can change the workflow for building apps and services; increasingly sophisticated automation can radically change the list of tasks you confront on a given day. Now there are hints that AI is accelerating these kinds of transformations.
“The skills required by employers in AI-exposed occupations are changing fast. Old skills are disappearing from job ads—and new skills are appearing—25 percent faster than in roles less exposed to AI,” states a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which analyzed more than half a billion job ads from 15 countries to determine how AI is impacting the current global workforce.
In the context of information security, for example, skills such as AI/ML inference and smart devices have seen notable increases in job-posting mentions (+113 percent and +81 percent, respectively) while cloud operations and JavaScript have declined; in analysis, job posting mentions of natural language programming and asset analytics have leapt (+64 percent and +3 percent, respectively), even as employer need for data synthesis and regression analysis dips (-8 percent and -21 percent, respectively).
For many tech professionals, learning the nuances of generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini is crucial, especially as more companies integrate these tools into their code-generating workflows. Mastering the right prompts for code generation will take you far. Many companies are also interested in building customized machine learning (ML) models; knowing how to set up and train an ML model can make you insanely valuable.
If you need a quick tutorial in all things AI, Google offers the following online lessons, including:
- Generative AI, explained
- Introduction to Generative AI
- Introduction to Large Language Models
- Generative AI Fundamentals Skill Badge
- What is Generative AI Studio?
- Introduction to Generative AI Studio
- Introduction to Image Generation
- Introduction to Responsible AI
- Responsible AI: Applying AI Principles with Google Cloud
Meanwhile, online learning portals such as Coursera offer courses from the likes of DeepLearning.AI, IBM, Vanderbilt University, and other institutions. PwC’s report also found that those who choose to specialize in AI can enjoy wage premiums of up to 25 percent on average—more than enough incentive for learning as much about this emerging tech as possible.
