In the next six years, India will have more than a million highly-skilled techies. There will be a surplus of talent they say. Of course, the quality of the talent remains a concern. To develop a talent pool ready to take on an AI-driven future, the approach will have to vary according to the segment of the population being targeted.
As per a Deloitte-Nasscom study, ‘Advancing India’s AI skills: Interventions and programmes needed’, there should ideally be three levels of learning, from basic to advanced.
Level 1 will target those with basic knowledge of AI, which will be relevant only for the next couple of years, maximum four. The skills at this level are not capable of propelling career growth. That means, knowledge of basic programming, data analysis and fundamentals of AI and machine learning (ML) will become irrelevant by 2028. Level 2 of learning will be imparting skills relevant today, that is, advanced ML, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), robotic process automation (RPA ) and AI model deployment. At the third level are skills of the future. That is, skills that will be widely sought in the next few years, including AI ethics and compliance, autonomous systems, edge AI, training and fine-tuning AI models and quantum computing for AI. In addition to this, problem-solving capabilities, critical thinking and social skills such as teaming and mentorship support and other foundational skills will also be imparted.
In alignment with these three levels of learning, the talent can be divided into five categories, each of them requiring different learning paths. For instance, the first category of ‘AI informed’ talent will require general AI literacy. The second category of ‘AI users’ will require a learning path focused on use of AI to enhance productivity so that they become AI first in their discipline. The third category will comprise ‘AI integrators’, that is, IT professionals who integrate AI tools in their existing work or processes. Builders, developers and architects of AI form the fourth category; they will need to learn to develop AI-related software and applications. The fifth and last category consists of experts, that is, the top talent involved in research and capable of developing AI models from scratch.
Thanks to the AI evolution, we can expect significant transformation across technology-based job roles. Not only will the existing ones see changes, new roles will be born. More than trend and experience, comprehension will be based on knowledge and understanding. Other areas where changes will be seen are, computation and information. While the former will become access and collaboration-dependent, the latter will be more predictive than descriptive.
There will be disruption in customer-facing roles, due to AI’s intervention in terms of accuracy and speed, while roles pertaining to analysis of unstructured data will see higher productivity and efficiency. New roles will also emerge, such as in the areas of legal and ethical compliance. There will be demand for privacy and compliance officers, AI governance architects, AI consultants and AI developers/creators.
According to a LinkedIn report, India is among the top five countries with fastest-growing AI talent. The other four are, Singapore, Finland, Ireland and Canada. The rate of growth of skills is faster in some AI segments than others, for instance, question answering, classification, recommender systems, computer vision and Natural Language Processing (NLP). These AI skills were adopted across industries such as technology, retail, education and financial services.
The same LinkedIn report reveals that last year, about 43 percent of the overall Indian workforce across sectors came across wide use of AI in their organisations. A good 60 per cent of all workers and 71 per cent of Gen Z professionals admit that their career prospects will improve if they acquire AI skills. Additionally, two of three Indians planned to learn at least one digital skill in 2023, with AI and machine learning being the most sought after skills.