AI Is Now Required Learning in More Schools, Jobs
AI knowledge is urgently needed; top business schools respond; Microsoft wants you to learn agents; corporate L&D being remapped; talent marketplaces delivering on upskilling, reskilling
By John P. Desmond, Editor, AI in Business
Harvard Business School is now requiring its MBA candidates to take an AI course. Data Science and AI for Leaders is now a requirement; the course is co-led by professors Karim R. Lakhani and assistant professor Iavor Bojinov. It replaces a previous data science course required of first-year students.
Two AI tools have been created for the course; one is a RAG-based tutor bot, housing all the knowledge, case and textbooks needed to understand the needed statistics, data and AI concepts; the second is the Julius.ai service, helping the student to program in the R and Python languages, according to a recent account in BusinessBecause. (Ed. Note: RAG stands for Retrieval-Augmented Generation, a technique that incorporates external data sources to improve the accuracy and relevance of GenAi model responses.)
Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has overhauled its curriculum around AI, introducing a new MBA major and undergraduate concentration in AI. It will be available to students in the fall of 2025, one of 21 MBA majors alongside accounting, finance, marketing and real estate. AI is one of 19 concentrations for undergraduate studying economics.
Students will be required to take classes in machine learning and ethics and choose from a list of electives spanning data mining to marketing to neuroscience, according to a recent account in Business Insider.
One of the required courses will be Big Data, Big Responsibilities: Toward Accountable Artificial Intelligence, an ethics class. Foundations of Deep Learning combines statistics and data science to introduce the technical foundations of AI, as well as neural networks, efficient deep learning and generative AI. This is to provide students with “a solid conceptual grasp on what goes on under the hood in modern AI models,” according to the syllabus for the course, advised on by Wharton professor Giles Hooker.
Eric Bradlow, the vice dean of AI and Analytics at Wharton, stated in a press release, "We are at a critical turning point where practical AI knowledge is urgently needed. Companies are struggling to recruit talent with the necessary AI skills, students are eager to deepen their understanding of the subject and gain hands-on experience, and our faculty's expertise on the adoption and human impact of AI is unmatched," he said.
Microsoft CEO Offers Career Advice
The CEO of Microsoft AI has some “obvious” advice for young people looking to succeed.
Study AI agents, suggests Mustafa Suleyman, in another recent account in Business Insider. The daily workflow in 10 to 15 years will not look like today’s, he suggested, noting, “It’s going to be much more about you managing your AI agent, asking it to go do things, check on its quality, getting feedback and getting into this symbiotic relationship where you iterate with it,” state Suleyman, in an interview relayed from the “Big Technology” podcast.
His advice to young people is to become familiar with AI technology, saying, “Use it, experiment, try stuff out, do crazy things, make mistakes, get it wrong … keep an open mind. Try everything you possibly can with these models, and then you’ll start to see their weaknesses as well.”
Corporate L&D Seen Being Transformed by AI
Corporate learning and development can be transformed in the age of AI to serve as a “strategic compass guiding companies through,” stated Krishnan Nilakantan, global head of learning and development with UST based in Chennai, India, writing in a recent issue of Chief Learning Officer. UST offers services to guide companies through digital transformation.
“By equipping employees to flourish in an AI-augmented environment, HR and L&D must be central in determining a promising future,” Nilakantan stated. He recommended four elements for an efficient reskilling or upskilling program:
Use strategic upskilling to empower the staff with the necessary skills to coexist peacefully with AI;
Use tools and approaches helps to preserve crucial human knowledge and facilitate cross-generational interaction;
Create customized training plans to improve human-AI cooperation; and
Encourage ongoing interactive group learning.
Tuning into the differences between reskilling and upskilling points in the right direction. “This is where one should grasp the essence of AI transformation: It is all about improving rather than replacing employees’ capabilities,” he stated.
Reskilling is setting up staff to acquire new skills to create opportunities to move into positions that arise from the integration of AI. “Generative AI can, for instance, transform data analysts into insights architects who use AI to generate predictive models, run simulations and provide actionable insights,” Nilakantan stated.
Conversely, upskilling emphasizes improving the skill sets of employees to adjust to AI-driven changes in their current roles, such as how to use AI tools to maximize workflows or evaluate challenging datasets.
“Therefore, organizations need both strategies to ensure their staff can efficiently negotiate the changing AI terrain,” he stated.
Gloat Offering a Talent Marketplace
The talent marketplace Gloat is gaining traction for its ability to help find hidden talent in an organization’s workforce. “Skill-building has always been a priority, but the rise of AI is raising the stakes,” stated Nicole Schreiber-Shearer of Gloat, a future of work specialist and author of a recent piece posted on the company’s blog. “The pace of change is accelerating and the half-life of skills is shrinking.”
She cited World Economic Forum predictions that half of all employees will need reskilling as the adoption of new technology rolls on. WEF also predicts this new economy will create millions of new rob roles.
Successful upskilling programs pair a learning curriculum with hands-on development opportunities in projects and gigs., also called experiential learning. And employees gain confidence by taking ownership of tasks, ideally ones aligned with their skills and interests.
In the context of successful examples of upskilling programs, she cited Mastercard, with 24,000 workers. “Now that disruption is the new norm, we really need employees to be on top of their game,” stated Lucrecia Borgonovo, Chief Talent and Organizational Effectiveness Officer. “They need to stay current, stay relevant, learn new skills, and become agile.”
Mastercard got 90% of the workforce to register on the L&D platform, and documented $21 million in value through increased productivity and another 100,000 hours of capacity gained. Cryptocurrency and NFT groups were created to address the growth of these emerging technologies.
In another experience, Schneider Electric found from an internal survey that nearly 50% of their exiting employees cited a lack of internal growth opportunities as a primary reason for leaving. The company instituted a talent marketplace to help connect workers with relevant training, projects and mentorship opportunities.
“What I am learning is that it’s a complete rewrite of HR,” stated Jean Pelletier, VP of Digital Talent Transformation at Schneider. “You need to think differently about speed and how you go deep and broad in an organization using AI.” She created the Gloat talent marketplace as helping the company to save $15 million from enhanced productivity and 360,000 hours of unlocked capacity. Unlocked capacity refers to having greater visibility into the skills of the workforce.
Read the source articles and information in BusinessBecause. in Business Insider, another recent account in Business Insider, in Chief Learning Officer and on the blog of Gloat.