COVER STORY: What AI skills do leaders need to ensure they don't get replaced?

There is no doubt that a big fear amongst leaders and employees in 2023 is around AI taking jobs rendering people useless.

While experts provide varying thoughts and opinions on what roles will be replaced with AI, a new adage in the industry has emerged noting that AI won’t take your job, but those with AI skills will.

According to the World Economic Forum, in the next five years, half of all workers will require some upskilling or reskilling to prepare for changing and new jobs.

If this is the case, what skills will decision-makers need to instil within themselves and their employees to ensure they don't lose their jobs?

There are two main areas of education that leaders should understand, according to Peter Kokkinos, VP and managing director at edutech platform Udemy the large language model (LLM) platform ChatGPT and generative AI.  

“The two areas that pop up, ChatGPT is the big one that everyone is gravitating to at the moment as a technology, that makes perfect sense,” he said.

But it is not just technical skills that are required to understand AI. 

Recent LinkedIn research highlighted interpersonal skills such as problem-solving, communication and creative thinking are considered essential as AI grows in prominence.

Kokkinos said he is seeing people look to power skills and leadership to complement the technical knowledge.

“At the end of the day, you can have all of those technical skills, but if you haven't got the ability to then understand how to apply them in your workforce, take those technologies and get people to move forward. It doesn't matter how good those technologies are if you don't know how to apply them," he explained. 

Pieter den Hamer, vice president AI at Gartner Research told Digital Nation the number one skill needed for AI use is critical thinking.

“AI is increasingly powerful, but it's not a miracle cure, it has its limitations,” he explained.

“It can make mistakes, we all know about hallucinations, but there are also other issues related to the reliability of AI.”

Understanding before implementation

William Payne, chief digital officer at Mirvac said there is a greater need for leaders to understand AI before they jump into upskilling.

“What skills do C-suite leaders need to build around AI specifically at the moment is understanding what AI is. There's no skills, it's not about building out skills,” he explained.

In terms of generative AI, Payne said nobody fully understands how it will impact organisations which means the C-suite needs a level of digital maturity.

“By digital maturity, I mean understanding technology and the value it can bring to the organisation. This is not your basic technology in terms of supporting your business processes,” he explained.

“It's more in the realms of how are you going to use that to enhance your customer experiences, how are you going to use technology to reduce your comparative or increase your comparative advantage against your competitors from a cost perspective?" He said. 

"All of those things are front and centre, it is about learning and understanding the technology.”

Payne explained leaders should continue experimenting and understanding how AI could impact their organisation.

“It's about monitoring experiments that are going on in the organisation and seeing how they might drive value. Most organisations are experimenting in some way or other,” he said.

“They're doing proof of concepts around generative AI and in the more analytical AI, which has been around a long time before generative AI. Organisations are well advanced in terms of using analytical AI for all sorts of different use cases.”

Upskilling everyone

AI knowledge isn’t just for leaders in technical roles, but those in non-technical roles too.

Den Hamer said upskilling is required in all sectors of an organisation.

“AI is so impactful, so pervasive that it will also require new skills from people in non-technical roles. People using AI are perhaps the most important group but also business leaders and executives requiring new skills to lead this effectively,” den Hamer said.

Den Hamer explained that not every task can be fully automated.

“First and foremost, people need to learn how to work with AI in an effective manner by recognising there are a few tasks that you can fully automate today with AI,” he said.

“But the vast majority of tasks cannot be fully automated and that's why we often refer to AI as something that augments people. We don't expect to see that AI will massively replace people not anytime soon, but it's more a matter of augmenting people to be more productive, to be more efficient.”

Where to begin?

For those leaders who don’t know where to begin on their AI upskilling journey, Kokkinos at Udemy said they should assess where AI can be used within their business.  

“What technologies do I need to know that I'm going to need to know to help me get through my daily tasks from a work perspective? What am I going to need to know to help guide my business going forward as well?” He said.

Kokkinos said while most people know about ChatGPT, leaders should be researching other AI-based technologies in the market.

“That is the challenge everybody's facing at the moment, we need to do more to understand,” he said.

Kokkinos explained that business leaders are still a fair way away from understanding how this technology is going to shape every industry.

“We're getting a sense of it at the moment, but to think that learners can proactively go out, get ahead of it, some will, but it's probably going to be a challenge for the broad community,” he explained.  

“Organisations are going to need to start to identify what technologies and how AI is going to impact them and then start guiding their employees towards that.”

Claudine Ogilvie, non-executive director at Cuscal explained that business leaders need to have a long-term plan for AI skills training.

“It's the change management side of things, the change and transformation is hard at the best of times and getting it right is even less likely if you look at the statistics,” she said.

“There's something perhaps a skillset in itself with change and transformation that boards and executives need to lean into all the more. How do we take our people on that journey and not a one-hit wonder? Let's just train them all up, it needs to be an ongoing and sustainable way of working, of changing and of educating.”

Finding the time

For Payne at Mirvac, he said one of the challenges in learning new skills is for leaders to find the time to educate themselves.

“It's always a challenge to find time for people to take time to build their own knowledge and skills base,” he said.

“There's plenty of course material available in every imaginable format and delivery method, there's lots of interesting stuff going on. It is about making sure people are able to find the time to properly study.”

For those leaders who are still unsure of AI, John Allsopp, founder of Web Directions Conferences said to think of AI as a “power tool” and organisations as “carpenters”.

“A drill doesn't make you a carpenter, but a drill makes carpenters so much more efficient, so much more productive,” he explained.

“It allows them to focus their energy and time on the things that matter, not drilling holes, but the intricate work and the things that take genuine skill, but by freeing up the time and energy they would otherwise put into drilling holes.”

Kokkinos at Udemy said once leaders understand the foundations of how AI works, and what it means, then they can begin to decide how to apply the technology within the business.

“Start at the beginning and even if you think there's some real nuances in the technology that may help you better understand it, better articulate it when you're talking to your peers and your team about it, you're more confident with how it might apply to your business,” he ended.