AI is Changing What is Valued In the Workforce

WAYLAND CHAU

Law and Ethics Professor, Pilon School of Business, Sheridan College

How is generative AI changing what employers value in the workforce?

Pilon School of Business law and ethics professor Wayland Chau discusses generative AI’s potential impact on the workforce and what skills are needed to succeed in the future of work.

How will generative AI and increased automation impact what employers value in the workforce?

In an AI economy, certain groups of people will be more highly valued than others. One such group is people whose work involves many physical aspects, including highly skilled and trained professionals such as nurses and tradespeople, as well as low skilled manual labourers. It’s difficult to see how robots could ever fully replace them.

Another group of people who I think will still be highly valued are the people who have traditionally been called knowledge workers... people whose value is based primarily on the output of their minds and their strengths in critical thinking, creativity, communication, leadership and collaboration. The power of those core human competencies will be magnified with the judicious use of AI.

The group that will be left behind will be people who don’t have those high-level competencies and merely rely on AI to think and communicate for them.

What is the Pilon School of Business doing to prepare students for success in the future of work?

Like the rest of the world, we’re still trying to figure things out. However, we are already well-positioned because our Bachelor of Business Administration degrees have always focused on high-level competency development in critical thinking, creativity, communication and leadership — skills our graduates will be able to use to leverage the power of generative AI, rather than simply relying on the technology.

We currently have a committee of faculty developing a list of the most important high-level competencies we’d like to infuse in all our programs, not only through purposeful inclusion in the content of our courses but also in the ways our professors teach the subject matter. In addition to teaching fundamental concepts, we’re training students with the ability to look at a situation, analyze it critically and creatively, and be able to communicate their findings effectively to others.

There is ongoing work in determining how best to provide our students with the AI skills that they will need to succeed.

Visit sheridancollege.ca/newsroom to read the full interview with Wayland Chau.