WASHINGTON DC – According to the Council of Economic Advisors, approximately 3.1 million jobs will be rendered obsolete or permanently altered as a consequence of artificial intelligence technologies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will, for the foreseeable future, have a significant disruptive impact on jobs. That said, this disruption can create new opportunities if policymakers choose to harness them—including some with the potential to help address long-standing social inequities. Investing in quality training programs that deliver premium skills, such as computational analysis and cognitive thinking, provides a real opportunity to leverage AI’s disruptive power.

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AI’s disruption presents a clear challenge: competition to traditional skilled workers arising from the cross-relevance of data scientists and code engineers, who can adapt quickly to new contexts. Data analytics has become an indispensable feature of successful companies across all industries. This reality dictates that companies invest heavily in data analytics to remain competitive and profitable.

Consequently, unlikely industries such as retail, banking, finance, and even agricultural firms are aggressively competing for talent with specific computational data science and programming skills. A recent IBM report expertly quantifies the scope and breadth of employers’ hiring demands, noting that “[d]emand for data-driven decision makers, such as data-enabled marketing managers, will comprise one-third of the data savvy professional job market, with a projected increase of 110,000 positions by 2020.” Herein lies a window of opportunity: the rapidly growing technical skills gap.

Investing in high-quality education and training programs is one way that policymakers proactively attempt to address the workforce challenges presented by artificial intelligence. It is essential that we make affirmative, inclusive choices to ensure that marginalized communities participate equitably in these opportunities.

To read the rest of this story, click on https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2017/11/16/leveraging-the-disruptive-power-of-artificial-intelligence-for-fairer-opportunities/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=58575242