The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Job Market: an amazing opportunity for Professional Education

The amazing opportunity for colleges, and large corporations 

A.I (Artificial Intelligence) is a hot topic. Many experts are comparing it to the invention of electricity in the 1800s. How is this new discipline already disrupting everything – including our approach to education? Its impact is bound to reverberate in interesting and unexpected ways.

As Artificial Intelligence will be putting millions out of the job market, it becomes crucial to train these millions of newly irrelevant workers to the needs of tomorrow's job market (and not yesterday's). This fact creates huge opportunities for post-secondary education institutions and major corporations to retrain/re-educate large swaths of people.  

At the heart of any reflection on the economic future of our community, the question of education is rooted. Without relevant, up to date education, it is almost impossible to ensure the economic viability of our community. You wouldn't train your students to run faster than cars. So why would you train them to think faster than A.I. algorithms? Instead, let's identify what are the skills of tomorrow. What industries, and disciplines will be flourishing in 5 to 10 years? And more importantly, what are the opportunities for large corporations and educational institutions? Educational institutions will have to prove themselves more flexible than ever to absorb an unprecedented number of individuals interested in micro-credentials. Major corporations will have to create their own "college type" institutions "in-house" to retrain their recently laid off workers. Governments will have to allocate large budgets to this new, yet crucial need. 

Where are we starting from?

In speaking with administrators from one of the Toronto School boards, they proudly told me that they would introduce coding classes. Thus, elementary school students would learn to code in several computer languages. Unfortunately, by the time these students finish school, artificial intelligence will have taken over this sector and will be able to program much faster than any human.

Again, it would never occur to us to train our students to run faster than cars. So why are we preparing them to code faster than computers? So many hours lost and so many dollars spent to prepare the next generation for jobs the day before yesterday.

The students then leave the education system and realize that their skills are becoming obsolete. They must start from scratch, study where the economy is going - the demographic and technological trends that give rise to the needs of the near future - and perhaps try to find a less obsolete training this time.

Where are we going?

As the Israeli writer and public speaker Yuval Noah Harari pointed out: "in 1990, we were almost certain that the world will be governed by the same rules as the world of 1980". Nothing much changed in 10 years. Indeed, a medical student was almost certain to find a job as a radiologist for example. A law student was almost sure to find a job as a lawyer. Today, the change is so radical that we no longer know if what teachers or adults tell us is "timeless wisdom" or their "obsolete worldview". The poor medical student will notice before the end of his studies that the image recognition has made so much progress that there will be no more radiologists within 10 years. The machines analyzing the X-Rays and MRIs do not even need to be perfect, they just have to be better or cheaper. Today these machines are both. The poor law student will realize that the function of a lawyer is not to scream at everything "objection your honor" in a room filled with citizens (who apparently have nothing else to do on a Wednesday afternoon ). 90% of his work will consist of looking for a detail in an endless pile of administrative documents. And again, the arrival of artificial intelligence will make this profession, as we know it today, disappear.

Good teachers - Great teachers

Although much progress has been made with this pre-war system, it is undeniable that this model has been obsolete for a long time. And yet, many persist in believing that they are doing service to the community when much of what is taught will not be used by our students in 20 years. Since most students can find knowledge online, good teachers understand that their role is now limited to organizing this knowledge and helping students navigate this ocean of information online. Great teachers however, understand that as Artificial Intelligence goes, it will put millions out of the job market. If they want to take advantage of these huge opportunity, educational institutions and major corporations will have to think about these questions:

1. How we can we absorb millions of newly irrelevant workers willing to re-educate themselves?

2. What are the skills of tomorrow?

3. How can we prepare the next generations of workers to the jobs of tomorrow?

Hoss | Hosni Zaouali