Kathy Gibson reports from the IITPSA Workforce Conference – With AI advancing rapidly and changing the nature of work, ICT professionals are finding it more difficult than ever to refresh their skills and keep themselves relevant.
Professor Helena Barnard, full professor at the Gordon Business Institute, explains that there are many different roles in the AI world, just as there are in other areas.
Citing the analogy of the motorcar, she points out that there are people who design cars, others that build cars, still others that fix cars and then the majority of people that drive them.
“So where do you place yourself in the AI economy?”
In this context we don’t all need to be AI designers – or even builders – but we can employ AI to help fix what is a uniquely South Africa labour paradox.
“We have huge unemployment at the same time that we have a skills shortage. So it is hard-wired into us to be effective in our use of resources.
“We could use AI to overcome some of the shortages we have, because it can help us produce quality solutions in a very short time period. It could provide a low-cost way of solving for problems that we have become so used to that we almost forget we have them.”
Prof Barnard believes AI can help South Africa to compete on an even level with countries that have better resources.
And this changes the conversation about AI causing job losses. “All the evidence says the jobs bloodbath is not happening in South Africa. Instead, AI is helping to fill a chronic absence of skills.”
It is not the solution to every problem, though, and people still have a vital role to play, with four qualities that technology can never replicate.
The first is foresight. “AI cannot give us foresight,” says Prof Barnard. “We need to cultivate it, so it can give us a way to understand our needs.”
Second is questioning. “You must ask questions. Because we are aware that the things that used to work might not any more, we can come up with better answers. How often do we hobble along with inadequate answers because we are not asking questions?”
The third quality is courage. “To reimagine a business is not necessarily an ICT skill,” says Prof Barnard. “And none of this is an easy journey – it is all hard.”
The final human quality is judgement. “The answers are out there, and you need judgement to find them,” Prof Barnard explains. “We used talk about being in a knowledge economy because knowledge was a differentiator. But AI wiped that off the table. What is important now is the judgement you apply to knowledge.”