The real AI training gap? IT leaders believe in it, but many don’t provide it

If you’re among the 95% of IT leaders who believe AI projects will fail without staff who can effectively use AI tools, chances are you’re not doing enough about it.

That’s because only 40% of executives and IT leaders say their organizations have formal AI training for employees, according to the recent Pluralsight AI Skills Report. And with CIOs increasingly responsible for setting the workforce AI training agenda, IT leaders may soon find themselves in the hot seat on AI preparedness.

And employees are taking note. Just over half of employees responding to a survey released in August by digital workplace vendor Slingshot said they felt adequately trained in AI.

“Anytime you have something, any sort of new technology that really upends the way we do things, it catches a lot of people off guard,” says David Harris, principal generative AI author at Pluralsight. “I think every businessperson knows that they need to implement AI in some way, but they’re not exactly sure how, and they’re not exactly sure how much their employees know.”

And the hiring market isn’t likely to help much, given that AI is such a new technology, Harris notes. Instead, he and other industry observers and experts believe all employees — developers, salespeople, and office workers included — can benefit from AI training.

Even IT workers have concerns about AI replacing their jobs. Nearly three-quarters of IT professionals who participated in Pluralsight’s survey said they feared AI would make their skills obsolete.

With jobs on the line, retention becomes an issue

AI will have a huge impact on the job market, making AI training essential for employees, says Kamal Ahluwalia, president of Ikigai Labs, provider of a generative AI tool that works with sparse enterprise data.

Ahluwalia believes AI will eventually eliminate a third of the current IT jobs, with another third enhanced through AI. Another third of future jobs will be created by AI, he predicts.

“I think the jobs displacement will be substantial, and it will happen faster than we realize,” says Ahluwalia, who previously served as president at HR company eightfold.ai. “I am being very direct with everyone I meet that you have to be prepared to learn the skills that keep you relevant, so that you can do what you want to do going forward.”

Organizations need to invest in AI training now, with CIOs and other executives championing training for employees, he says. CIOs and other executives need to encourage employees to continuously learn the latest AI skills, and they need to point out the success stories of workers who put their AI training to good use.

Training employees also makes sense because of a shortage of AI expertise in the market, he adds.

“Helping the companies change how they look at this reskilling, upskilling wave is a big deal,” he says. “You have to get the executives to champion the change, not just sit on the side and let other midlevel or individual contributors deal with it, because that sets the tone in every organization, big or small.”

Moreover, even as 74% of IT pros worry that AI will make their skills irrelevant, 81% feel confident they can integrate AI into their roles right now, according to Pluralsight’s survey. Organizations that do not actively engage IT pros in AI upskilling are at risk of losing them to organizations that will, given IT pros increasingly view AI training as existential for their careers.

Creating harmony

Erik Brown, senior partner for AI and engineering at West Monroe Partners, a digital consulting firm, says this instinct is correct, as organizations and employees alike need to prepare for an “AI everywhere” future.

To prepare, Brown says AI training should focus on “building harmony” between employees and AI and showing humans they call the shots. “Pair human creativity and critical thinking with AI’s efficiency for the best results,” he adds.

Although some employees will be more affected by AI than others, training should be available to all, Brown adds. “Companies should also invest in developing and enhancing skills for all employees — from the C-suite down,” he says. “Democratizing access to training for all employees, including those at the top, means everyone can contribute and be accountable for driving an AI-forward culture.”

While many IT leaders sing the praises of AI training, some acknowledge that there are challenges. Many employees lack the time to engage with training courses, especially in sustained blocks, says Dustin Johnson, CTO at Seeq, a provider of data analytics and AI tools. He recommends that companies use digestible, just-in-time courses tailored to each employees’ needs.

Companies can also use AI to design and deliver training courses; for example, an AI tool could consolidate training and reference material and provide information tailored to the specific equipment and processes at a manufacturer, he says.

Unleash the trailblazers

Johnson also recommends investing in AI and allowing pioneering employees to work with it. Then, companies can host webinars and other events showcasing the ways the trailblazers have found success and avoided hallucinations and other AI problems.

“These sessions offer an opportunity for project leaders to share how rapid developments in prompt engineering, which tell the AI how to think about questions, and how the retrieval of relevant documentation is driving exponential improvements in accuracy,” he says. “This increases confidence in the technology, providing the ability to trace results by verifying the data and input they are given.”

Another challenge is the rapid advancement of AI technology, adds Pluralsight’s Harris. AI training courses need to be updated regularly to reflect new capabilities and uses, he says.

In some cases, information provided in AI courses can get old within a week, he adds.

“It’s no longer, ‘This is something that’s due out in the year, or we’ve got a new version of such and such software that is expected to take months from now,’” he says. “This is, ‘What was it like yesterday? And how is it going to be tomorrow?’”