Investing in Youth
Skilling refocus in an age of AI and disruptive technologies is vital when it comes to investing in youth. Report by Nikita Talnikar, Research Analyst – Economic Analytics at Frost & Sullivan. This article is part of In Focus special issue.
In an era of unprecedented technological advancements, transformative forces of disruptive technologies are rendering business models obsolete and redefining conventional job roles. The emergence of technologies such as AI, ML, blockchain and IoT is fostering a profound shift in the nature of employment. For instance, increased automation is creating demand for a workforce equipped with advanced technical knowledge in terms of hard skills including IT, programming and data science, coupled with key soft skills of critical thinking, creativity and adaptability.
This speedy progress comes with a fair share of challenges, creating a global skills gap, wherein the demanded level of expertise often outpaces the skills possessed by the workforce. This problem becomes particularly alarming when considering the future workforce or today’s youth. In 2030, the young population, of people aged 15 to 34 years, will total 2.5 billion persons across the globe.[1] Youth unemployment, already a global challenge, will exacerbate without adequate policy action to upskill and reskill the young workforce and equip them to navigate a highly technology-driven terrain.
Imperative for Collaborative Stakeholdership to Future-Proof the Youth
Three primary stakeholders — governments, corporations and educational institutions — must invest in upskilling and reskilling[2] initiatives to maintain competitiveness and ensure robust and sustainable growth amid tectonic shifts in the global macroeconomic landscape.
Strategic Imperatives for Key Stakeholders to Invest in Youth Skilling
Governments: Skill disparities between countries put lagging nations at a disadvantage as investments and talent are lost to countries with a highly skilled labour force. Conducive policy support is hence required to identify skills gaps and future-proof the young population and make the labour force globally competitive.
The government’s role in building a nation and state-wide platforms for bolstering partnerships between private players and educational institutions cannot be overstated. Governments in partnership with companies and educational institutions should roll out specially designed AI and disruptive technology skilling programs to provide in-depth learning options accessible anytime and anywhere.
Corporations: Investing in youth training and development programmes will provide global firms with a competitive edge. This will attract top-tier talent and provide meaningful avenues for collaboration within the current and future workforce. Investments in potential future employees through internships and apprenticeships will drive long-term efficiency gains as full-time conversions result in sizable time and cost savings.
The utilisation of AR and VR-centered learning models for in-house skilling programs can be a great introduction of emerging technologies to the new entrants in the company workforce. Additionally, to ensure larger participation, firms must tie in the acquisition of technical skills (varying from industry to industry) as a key performance metric and incentivize employees to ideate profitable use cases that leverage these technologies.
Educational Institutions: Building relevant skilling programs to meet industry needs will drive employability and boost students’ success rates, while continuous evaluation of curriculums and incorporation of emerging technologies will ensure the relevancy of educational outcomes. Moreover, instilling a lifelong learning approach in students right from their schooling years will ensure the adoption of continuous skilling habits throughout their professional careers.
Colleges and universities must integrate technology-centric learning and development courses into bachelor’s and master’s degree syllabus. This holds true not only for the STEM[3] stream but also for fields such as law, finance, medicine, humanities and arts. Opportunities to opt for such sandwich courses/dual degrees will provide the youth with early exposure to existing and emerging technologies and their impacts on respective fields.
Global Case Examples of Public and Private Sector Contributions to Technology-Focused Youth Skilling
The UAE launched the National Program for Artificial Intelligence in 2018, which not only includes a specially designed bachelor’s degree in AI but also prioritises AI internships and boot camps to armour young Emiratis for a tech-driven future. India’s 2021 Big Data Initiatives Programme provides financial support for extensive R&D in Big Data analytics and Big Data education. The Asian giant, with 265 million enrolled school children in FY 2022[4], also rolled out the YUVAi (Youth for Unnati and Vikas with AI) programme, providing secondary and higher secondary school students an understanding of AI’s utility through applied learning experience tools.
Several global corporations are heavily investing in reskilling and upskilling initiatives for their employees worldwide, which also covers the youth. IBM has announced 170 academic and industry partnerships aiming to reskill and upskill 30 million across the globe by 2030. Amazon.com, Inc. launched the USD1.2 billion Upskilling 2025 programme, which is expected to cover 300,000 employees for talent upskilling as the firm embraces automation technologies. Wipro has earmarked USD1 billion in investments for AI, including training for 250,000 employees covering fundamentals and responsible use of AI.
Early Exposure to Real-time Technology Evolution and Human-Intelligence Complemented AI will be a Core Demand
Analysing and understanding the exact impacts of AI and a variety of disruptive technologies on different industries is the need of the hour. For instance, AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Bard.ai are weighing on the services sector, while on the manufacturing front, automation and digitalisation are the key disruptors.
With these rapid shifts underway, education reforms that integrate technology-centric curriculum using engaging and hands-on learning tools at the higher secondary school, college and university levels will be highly beneficial. This will provide students with much needed insight into the fast-evolving operational environments in the secondary and tertiary sectors.
The role of human Intelligence as a complement to AI also warrants careful consideration. A burst of software AIs in recent months has created a market demand for AI prompt engineers, a position which is earning salaries northwards of USD300,000 annually, in the United States.[5] This clearly underscores those human traits of critical thinking, creativity and perception will continue to remain invaluable. Global stakeholders must parallelly invest resources into industry-centric technical skilling and soft skills development for future-proofing the workforce in an era of constant technological disruptions, hybrid-working models and multigenerational teams.
As the world stands at the intersection of AI and disruptive technologies, Joseph Schumpeter’s characterisation of creative destruction[6] stands true in all walks of life, not just manufacturing. The ability to harness the potential of technological innovations will be determined by the commitment of individuals, institutions, corporations and governments to continuous learning and adaptation. Continuous reskilling is paramount to ensure long-term macroeconomic resilience, even more so amongst the youth, as their share in the total population surpasses the 29 per cent mark globally by 2030.
[1] World Population Prospects 2022, United Nations Population Division
[2] Continuous strengthening of existing skillsets for boosting productivity and performance in current role is termed as upskilling. Acquiring new skill/s that support the shift to a new role or significantly transform a current role is known as reskilling
[3] Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
[4] Indian Ministry of Finance. Financial Year 2022 refers to April 2021 to March 2022 period
[5] Forbes; AI Prompt Engineers Earn $300k Salaries: Here’s How To Learn The Skill For Free
[6] Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian political economist, defined creative destruction as the ‘process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one’
Images from Unsplash
