Seminar: How will AI affect the tech sector and skills needs?
Developments in the field of AI are moving fast and bringing changes for everyone. For the tech sector, this means that the need for new skills is increasing while old tasks are disappearing. During TechSverige's hybrid event entitled How will AI affect the tech sector and skills needs? there was a discussion about which occupational groups will be winners and which will be losers, but also about whether skills needs can continue to increase and how the need for further training and retraining can be met once AI has entered the picture.
Carl-Johan Hamilton, Vice President of Ants and Board Member of TechSverige, started the discussion and emphasized the importance of an organization like TechSverige that can create forums for discussions but also push issues politically: "In disruptive times, politicians tend to want to act and then it is important that we have a voice.
Ana Andric, an expert on industrial policy at TechSverige, addressed the skills shortage, which has long been one of the tech industry's biggest issues and a challenge for society as a whole. The question is whether AI will be able to reduce or change the need for skills. TechSverige is currently conducting a skills survey and aims to publish the results in early 2024.
After an introduction by the moderator Magnus Höij, Gardar Björnsson Rova, Lead Artificial Intelligence at McKinsey, presented his predictions for the future of the world economy and Swedish tech industry. Gardar Björnsson Rova, who leads McKinsey's "AI arm" Quantum Black and published the report "Exploring opportunities in the generative AI value chain" this spring, pointed out that we have not yet seen the large-scale AI applications until now. For the tech industry, the development of AI will mean a paradigm shift in the way we interact with software in computers. Instead of clicking through, we will talk to them - in our own language. From a business perspective, generative AI will impact business functions more than individual industries. It is expected to have the biggest impact on marketing and sales, but also software development. For product development, AI can not only speed up work by up to 30% but also improve quality by 20%.
In the first of the two following panel discussions, Malin Ekwall, Director, Randstad Technologies, Randstad and Jennie Sinclair, Nexer Group, formed an industry trio together with Carl-Johan Hamilton. The theme of the conversation was "How AI development is becoming an opportunity for tech sector players" and it was discussed, among other things, that AI increases the demands on "soft skills", personal qualities that affect how you work and interact".
"We've been playing machines for a very long time and it has served a purpose until now, but now we have the opportunity to go from industrialism to spiritualism. Back to the biological," said Jennie Sinclair.
In the final panel on the theme "How regulations, education and politics are affected when AI technology redraws the map", Tomas Persson, CEO, Swedish Agency for Higher Vocational Education, Arnold Pears, Professor, KTH, Per Norlander, Vice President of the Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers, Martin Wästfelt, Head of Negotiations, Unionen, and Ana Andric participated.
"AI brings great potential to the labor market but we will need more education and training on different things than we do today. We need to have the ability to equip our professionals so that they can evolve with the changes that are taking place in the labor market," Ana Andric concluded.