According to a World Economic Forum report, jobs in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will be the fastest-growing career type over the next four years. What skill sets will be most in demand and what education and qualification options are available for people looking to upskill or to enter the sector?
AI and machine learning
AI is a field which combines computer science and robust data sets to enable problem-solving, says Derek Collins, director of collaboration and innovation at Huawei Ireland Research Centre. “To take that a step further, AI encompasses the idea of a machine that mimics human intelligence. AI has three key elements: computing power, algorithms and data. These constitute the foundation of AI.
“ML is a branch of AI that includes statistical techniques enabling machines to improve at tasks. This includes deep learning, like teaching algorithms to help software to train itself to perform tasks such as speech recognition.”
AI and industry
Enterprises globally are adopting AI primarily to perform tasks traditionally done by humans, says Kieran Towey, applied intelligence lead at KPMG. “Take, for example, remote onboarding to a bank. Now you can download an app, upload your ID and take a photo and you are a customer. Previously you had to go to a bank branch and bring the documents with you.
“So, we are automating tasks – a wide variety of tasks across all industries, from autonomous driving to automated fraud detection. Wherever a business needs to make a decision and we have had humans make those decisions in the past, we have the data to train AI, which starts to drive AI adoption across almost every business unit. It is also closely tied to the focus on digital transformation; if we record all activity digitally, we provide the foundation to enable AI to learn what are the desired outcomes and how to be more efficient at achieving these outcomes.”
Careers in AI
UCD professor of operational risk in banking and finance Cal Muckley says there are excellent opportunities in AI and banking “not least in compliance, in the anti-money-laundering space, countering fraud generally and also improving the customer experience – for example, robot advice and expediting lending decisions.”
Few people realise that the advent of these new capabilities in AI is opening whole new arenas to people that were previously closed, says Towey.
“The assumption was that to work with AI, you needed to be a programmer, computer scientist or mathematician but that’s no longer true,” he adds. “You can become a graphic artist and generate visually striking content using not much more than your imagination and basic computer skills. Current versions of AI are essentially ‘no code’.
“You can communicate in English your requests and refine the output. People are doing it right now from a fun perspective, whether it’s writing songs or books using Chat GPT, but that’s the new world. We can draw on the vast corpus of knowledge generated historically by experts in their fields and bring our own perspective to areas where we can bring our creative processes to bear.”
Skilling up
Skills in demand right now centre on the key development of AI tools in the domains of video, text, images, design, coding, audio and productivity, says Collins. “Tools that one should be aware of, and industry are looking for competencies in, would be likes of Huawei ModelArts, Muse AI, Visia AI and Topaz AI for video; Bugasura, CodeGPT and Replit Ghostwriter for coding; and ChatGPT, Notion AI and Compose for text.”
Due to the automation of model fitting and testing steps in the AI life cycle, career opportunities at the project level will likely be mostly about project management, with subject domain area experts informing the selection of model features and sample quality, says Muckley.
While we absolutely do need technical skills, we can see that the capability of AI is being democratised to non-technical personnel, says Towey. “That is the future; we need to build more systems thinking and problem-solving skills, where people will use AI as a tool to help them achieve their business goals and the creatives will come to the fore.
“Linear thinking will be replaced by more creative thinking skills.”