The AI consortium is built from the United States-European Union Trade and Technology Council’s Talent for Growth Task Force
Technology powerhouses including Cisco Systems, IBM, Accenture, Microsoft, Google and Intel have formed a new group called the AI-Enabled Information and Communication Technology Workforce Consortium to help the global workforce prepare for the drastic changes that artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to bring. The consortium, born from the work of the United States-European Union Trade and Technology Council’s Talent for Growth Task Force, will provide workers with resources relevant to retraining programs and connect businesses to appropriately skilled workers.
Earlier this year, IBM published the IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023, which found that “37% of IT professionals within the telecommunications industry state that their company is … deploying AI.” But challenges persist with the same survey identifying the primary impediment to “successful AI adoption” being “limited AI skills and expertise.”
During its first phase, the consortium will to examine AI’s impact on 56 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) job roles in order to provide training recommendations. According to Cisco, these job roles include 80% of the top 45 ICT job titles garnering the highest volume of job postings for the period February 2023-2024 in the United States and five of the largest European countries by ICT workforce numbers. “Collectively, these countries account for a significant segment of the ICT sector, with a combined total of 10 million ICT workers,” stated the company.
“AI is accelerating the pace of change for the global workforce, presenting a powerful opportunity for the private sector to help upskill and reskill workers for the future,” Francine Katsoudas, executive vice president and chief people, policy and purpose officer at Cisco, said in a statement. “The mission of our newly unveiled AI-Enabled Workforce Consortium is to provide organizations with knowledge about the impact of AI on the workforce and equip workers with relevant skills.”
For IBM, involvement in the group, feels like a continuation of the work it began with the GSMA in January. The pair announced a “collaboration to support the adoption and skills of generative artificial intelligence in the telecom industry,” according to a press release. The push is anchored by an AI training program run by GSMA Advance and the GSMA Foundry Generative AI challenge and program.
In addition to the companies mentioned above, the consortium included Indeed, Eightfold AI and SAP as well as six advisers.
