Competences of the future. How are non-technical linked to IT?

If you believe scientists at Yale and Oxford University, in just over 100 years robots and artificial intelligence will take over the labor market, replacing people in almost all occupations and industries. Sounds futuristic? According to the forecasts for the next 4 years, even half of us may be forced to change jobs or acquire completely new skills.

At the beginning of last year ‘Wired’ magazine published an article stating that developers are new "blue collars". In this article, sentence was used that the “code could replace coal” when talking about miners who retrain to become coders. Retraining is the first of the trends on the labor market. The second concerns the need to acquire skills related to programming or designing technological solutions in order to develop professionally.

According to the report of Burning Glass, an analytics software company, in 2015 alone, more than 7 million job advertisements in the United States required at least basic coding skills from the candidates. In the next 10 years, no other professional skills will develop faster.

From the text you will learn:

1. How does automation and robotization affect the labor market?

2. How are professions like a lawyer, scientist or artist connected to the IT industry today?

3. Why is it worth encouraging your employees to acquire technological skills now?

Automation of the labor market

Due to the popularization of automation and systems operating on the basis of artificial intelligence, some professions, especially those that do not require specialist knowledge and qualifications, will disappear.

Forecasts on how many jobs will be taken over due to robotization and automation, however, are quite diverse:

• experts from the University of Oxford estimate that 47% of existing occupations will disappear by 2030;
• World Economic Forum data collected in the "Future of Jobs Report" shows that almost half of the surveyed employers predict that automation will lead to a reduction in employment by 2022;
• OECD forecasts from 2016 are much more optimistic - experts estimate that only 9% of jobs are at risk;
• from the estimation of McKinsey Global Institute from 2013, it appears that by 2025 every fourth task out of these performed by employees of the production, construction, maintenance or agricultural sectors will be fully automated;
• by 2136 at the latest, robots and artificial intelligence will replace people in all professions and industries - according to the analyzes carried out by scientists from Yale and Oxford University.

“The only certainty about the future labor market is the fact that it will be subject to constant changes. The professions that our children will perform do not exist yet. Probably the best thing you can do is prepare them for the fact that they will have to change their skills and acquire new skills every few years” - says Piotr Gnyp, head of bizdev at Tengent creative studio.

This is confirmed by global analyzes. By 2022, at least 54 percent of all employees will have to retrain or significantly improve their qualifications - according to the above-quoted "Future of Jobs Report".

In addition to such valuable soft skills as analytical and critical thinking or creativity and demonstration of initiative, the skills associated with new technologies - programming or designing of technological solutions will grow in importance.

Professions of the future

“The biggest changes will take place in the industries and professions, which can be easily algorithmized, rely on data analysis or search patterns. The introduction of autonomous vehicles will mean that not only drivers but also other social groups may suddenly be unemployed, such as couriers, postmen, sorting workers, etc. And this is not all, because we also have to think about the whole service - fuel networks, roadside motels or pubs. If the driver does not have to stop for rest, they are unnecessary. It may even lead to the complete elimination of people from entire sectors of the economy”, Piotr Gnyp notes.

Business completely based on digital technologies will constitute 25 percent of World economy in 2020. This is the conclusion of the Accenture Technology Vision 2016 report. A survey carried out on a group of over 3,000 managers of international companies clearly shows that in the next three years there will be a dynamic development of digital technologies used in business. And even the most traditional industries and professions today have to get used to it.

''The changes will affect us all almost independently of the duties at work. Even if our work is not related to technological innovations such as AI, everyday life changes irreversibly. New technologies are applied effectively and very quickly in unexpected places. I lived in a time when the mobile phone was a huge, unergonomic and very expensive tool for specialists. Today, smartphones are in practically in the everybody’s hands and are used in work often in an unusual way”, notes Max Salamonowicz, CEO of ACR Systems, producer of innovative camera stabilizers.

In the recently published book "Far Future" Natalia Hatalska recalls the report "Inspired Minds Careers 2030", developed by the Canadian Scholarship Trust. It indicates 89 professions of the future that do not exist today. Among them were such new professions as:

• wearable technology therapist - a person offering therapy based on the technologies we wear;
• digital memory curator - responsible for deleting potentially unwanted Internet content about a deceased person.

In the analysis of the World Economic Forum, the surveyed employers estimate that every third job position in their industries is in the phase of disappearance, which means it is actually already unnecessary. In 2022 one out of four employees will occupy a completely new position - one that is not yet in the company today.

“New professions are already being created today, related to servicing systems based on machine learning, e.g. data scientist. His competences include preparation of input data to be processed by the system, as well as creation of appropriate algorithms, on which the system will work. This profession requires combination of programming, analytical and statistical skills. In the long run, the professions that connect people directly with machines will also gain importance. Since robots and automated machines are increasingly affecting our work and everyday life, more and more people will be needed to program or preserve them”, explains Marcin Tchórzewski, CEO of Coders Lab IT School.

Such professions as data scientist or tech robot programmer require advanced programming skills and additional qualifications, acquisition of which takes a lot of time. The labor market will also need millions of programming specialists in industries that have not been directly associated with new technologies such as law, medicine or ... art.

Artistic code - creative industry and programming

Among atypical professions that gain a lot thanks to programming knowledge... artists are mentioned.

“Let's take for instance the work of designers dealing with 3D objects. Whether they work for a studio preparing effects for TV commercials or will find themselves in the world of gaming - programming skills are invaluable and greatly improve the comfort of work with the rest of the team. In addition, a person with developed knowledge in both fields can achieve effects that would be impossible to achieve without the synergy of these two worlds. Their "non-technical" industry is already the most "technical" one due to the increasingly frequent requirement to learn programming”, notes Max Salamonowicz.

The discussion about the future of artists' work takes place among the interested ones. Jacek Dukaj, a science-fiction and fantasy author, wondered in his essay about art in the time of artificial intelligence at what point one could question the authorship of a given work because it was created using a machine.

“From which moment it is possible to say, for example, to say: "Program X used Jan Kowalski to create this work of art"? "This book is in 99 percent creation of man and in 1 percent of his typewriter. " Does this sentence seem absurd to us only because the typewriter is devoid of self-awareness?” - Jacek Dukaj asks.

Application will become your lawyer?

Automation of documents, e-learning, online legal advice or the use of software for project management are just some of the solutions widely used in legal reality. But the industry is facing a real revolution.

“ROSS software developed by IBM enables us to prepare optimal dispute scenarios, monitor legal changes and inform about those that concern us, prepare court rulings most suited to the nature of the matter we deal with. What proved the so-called mock trials conducted in one of the American law firms, ROSS does it with greater efficiency than a team of qualified lawyers. And much faster, and hence, cheaper”, notes attorney Micha? Kibil, managing partner at Kibil & Associates.

On the market there are already appearing applications based on artificial intelligence, which allow you to choose the optimal path of divorce between spouses, estimate the chances of winning / losing the process based on collected evidence, prepare a set of legal documents - and all this for no more than 10% the average cost of running a lawsuit. These so-called smart contracts are based on the technology of distributed registers (DLT) - digital agreements operating in the form of self-service applications. Intelligent contracts work on the simple principle: "if X happens, do Y".

“Where is the lawyer supposed to be in all this? Most of the activities that are repetitive - audits, preparation of contracts, case-law research and doctrine in terms of dispute - can easily be replaced by appropriate IT solutions. I would see the role of a modern lawyer in the ability to use the indicated solutions to provide its customers with a higher quality, faster and at a lower price. But also - which may seem far more promising - in creating new software, smart code algorithms with proper logic, or to function as a review instance that verifies decisions made by algorithms” - Micha? Kibil summarizes.

The programmer will help you find a new drug

,,A computer equipped with the appropriate software is able to notice complicated dependencies that the human mind would never see. Just let the machine find the rules. For example, I use machine learning algorithms to search for new biologically active compounds”, says Rafa? Kurczab from the Institute of Pharmacology PAS in Cracow.

The scientist admits that thanks to the ability to program algorithms, scientists can search large databases faster and more efficiently and draw conclusions. "A human, even if he spent very long time on this data, is not able to analyze it effectively, he just lacks the imagination", noted Dr. Kurczab.

Today, algorithms can save human lives. A decade ago, in the United States, a method of searching for donors for kidney transplants based on the matching algorithm (first developed in the 1960s) was proposed. It often happens that a given patient has an altruistic donor (e.g. someone from the family), but for medical reasons he is not suitable. Organ trafficking is illegal, but organ barter is already acceptable. The algorithm therefore searches the database for other donors and recipients in a similar situation, so that it is best to match the pair to each other. Thanks to this algorithm, the number of transplants from living donors increased in a short time.

“The world is moving towards automated solutions based on more or less complex algorithms. The ability to describe certain complex activities through an algorithm that leads to the desired result or effect is the key competence of the future”, emphasizes Marcin Tchórzewski.

Raising competences - the role of the employer or the employees themselves?

Currently, only 30% of Poles expand their skills in the area of work, and 20% attend courses and trainings improving employee competences - according to the report "Active + Future of the Labor Market" by Gumtree.pl.

“To remain on the job market, employees will soon be facing the challenge of combining many competencies - strategic, business and those related to IT knowledge. A lot of work is also waiting for the employers themselves - if they do not want to complain about the lack of qualified workers in a few years, they have to educate them on their own” - notes Marcin Tchórzewski.

Convincing current employees and employers to the fact that they will have to learn constantly is not enough. Education system needs to be changed so that the current students get used to this reality as soon as possible.

As Saku Tuominen, a Finnish innovator and founder of the HundrED, organization promoting global innovation in education, said in a recent interview with Gazeta Wyborcza:

“The world in which we will live in 2030 and beyond will be full of uncertainty. So every child who graduates should be happy that it will learn all the time. The school has to prepare them for it today. It would be exciting for the child to learn and learn new things to be able to face an unexpected situation, an event, a problem and not to run away, nor to be afraid, but to see it as a new challenge ahead. In addition, we must have the skills to implement new solutions. You have an idea, but you must know how to put it into practice".

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Coders Lab is no. 1 vocational IT School in Poland. With the most extensive product portfolio on the Polish market, we have transformed over 2400 careers through innovative education in today’s most in-demand IT skills. Our full-time on-campus courses are delivered in 9 Polish cities. They include intensive classes, in which students create numerous projects on their own. This is a verified method which helps learn the skills and allows to become self-sufficient.

Having achieved success on domestic market, Coders Lab is now expanding globally. We believe that our outstanding products and skills in the field of courses organization and sales perfectly match with current labor market trends and needs.

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