WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

We surveyed more than 3,000 CEOs around the world to learn how they are positioning their organizations for success after COVID-19. Five key factors set outperforming CEOs apart.

We estimate that globally, there will be 86,000 authors pre-publishing fundamental and applied AI research papers on arXiv in all of 2020; and that there are approximately 478,000 people globally with the specialized AI technical skills needed for building an AI product. You can read the full report with further breakdowns of the data here. Below I share why understanding the talent pool can help explain the friction in getting AI to work.

Global research highlights how AI is changing the relationship between people and technology at work.

Get a copy of the playbook Leading Upskilling Initiatives in Data Science & Machine Learning, compliments of Dataiku.

This post focuses on one important aspect of  the machine learning at Linkedin’s feed: candidate selection. Before final fine feed ranking, a personalized candidate generation algorithm is applied to tens of thousands of feed updates to select a diverse and unique candidate pool. We describe the machine learning models applied in candidate generation and the infrastructure capabilities that support accurate and agile model iterations.

These are the top 10 skills you will need in the workplace in 2020.

Workplaces and workflows will change as more people work alongside machines

Additional economic growth, including from business dynamism and rising productivity growth, will also continue to create jobs. Many other new occupations that we cannot currently imagine will also emerge and may account for as much as 10 percent of jobs created by 2030, if history is a guide. Moreover, technology itself has historically been a net job creator. For example, the introduction of the personal computer in the 1970s and 1980s created millions of jobs not just for semiconductor makers, but also for software and app developers of all types, customer-service representatives, and information analysts.

It may come as no surprise that technology-centric roles stole the show among emerging jobs in the United States, but the prevalence of machine learning and data science roles and skills indicate a shift in the types of technology we can expect to be using in the near future, as well as what professionals should be preparing themselves for.

Having an academic background and a comprehensive suite of skills were also strong trends, especially among professionals who are now machine learning engineers and data scientists. Both of these roles are also often held by professionals with 10 years or more of professional experience, so for those just starting out and having trouble landing one of these titles, don’t be discouraged!

It’s always a good reminder that soft skills will always be important, no matter the profession. The ability to collaborate, be a leader, and learn from colleagues will stand out in interviews, and even more once starting a job.

Automation will eliminate jobs but it will also create them. Here are 21 jobs that will exist in the future.

By next year, around 75% of financial firms will either explore or implement artificial intelligence technologies, according to a survey by Greenwich Associates. The research and consulting firm thinks some 15% of the industry’s jobs are at risk.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology point out that when automotive transport arrived, a whole group of workers—horses—were displaced, never to be employed again. They lost their jobs and vanished from the economy.
I would add another historical precedent. Offshoring in the last few decades has eaten up physical jobs and whole industries, jobs that were not replaced. The current transfer of jobs from the physical to the virtual economy is a different sort of offshoring, not to a foreign country but to a virtual one. If we follow recent history we can’t assume these jobs will be replaced either.

Maths ability will get you furthest, says Harvard's Davis Deming. As long as you've got the social skills to go with it.

For example, working at a tollbooth may be a secure job. But whatever gains the economy gets from having people making change at tollbooths are more than offset by the loss of time that results when other people have to wait in traffic to enter a toll road. Starting in October, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority will shift to entirely automatic tolls. Machines will do all the work of collecting tolls, and toll collectors either will be reassigned to other positions within the authority or will have to find new jobs. But traffic will flow more easily, leading to big gains in efficiency for truckers and people getting to work, and less waste of fuel.