Microsoft’s report on skills for AI powered future

Microsoft has also come out with its own list of skills we will need to develop to thrive in the AI era. My last post was about WEF Jobs of the Future report that was encapsulating what the largest corporations were saying in terms of hiring predictions and skills needed for the next 5 years. I mentioned that report will be through the prism of large corporations’ needs and not necessarily what will be best for individuals. In my mind, one thing missing from that list is entrepreneurial skill, and now that I’m thinking of it, ability to learn, to explore new horizons and learn from them.

Well, Microsoft is probably also looking at the skills for the future through its own prism. Their prism will be through the use of AI because they are rapidly expanding their AI offerings. Every day there is something new from Microsoft, and from OpenAI and Google.

It feels like an AI gold rush.

WEF Top 10 Skills List

First, here’s the link to the page where you can download the report as well as read a short synopsis of its report: “Future of Jobs Report 2023”. I don’t think I provided this link in my last post.

Let’s revisit what WEF said in its latest Jobs of the Future report:

• Analytical thinking
• Creative thinking
• Resilience, flexibility and agility
• Motivation and self-awareness
• Curiosity and life long learning
• Technological literacy
• Dependability and attention to detail
• Empathy and active listening
• Leadership and social influence
• Quality control

Microsoft List of AI Skillset

First, here’s the link to the article that outlines Microsoft’s list: “Top skills you will need for an AI powered future”.

I’m rereading the website and Microsoft’s report is based on a study of 31,000 people in 31 markets between February and March of 2023, so after the black swan event of ChatGPT. Also on that website, beside a link to its report, is a reference to the Goldman Sach’s study that predicted 300 million jobs will be impacted by the new generative AI. Unfortunately, I have not been able to access that original report to read what it actually says.

Microsoft calls these skills the AI skillset:

• Analytical judgement
• Flexibility
• Emotional intelligence
• Intellectual curiosity
• Bias detection and handling
• AI delegation (prompts)

There’s quite a bit of overlap between the two lists but Microsoft is missing creativity, technological literacy, leadership and social influence. As a matter of fact, my preference would be to replace dependability/attention to details and quality control with bias detection/handling and AI delegation. And add entrepreneurial skills.

LinkedIn List

On that same web page, LinkedIn was reported to have said that the fastest growing AI skills were: question answering, classification, recommender systems, computer vision, and natural language processing. These skills sound like AI related computing skills.

Okay, got waylaid there, reading and following links to more stories.

Anyway, those are the current thinking about what we will need to develop. I’m going to use the WEF version with my adjustments to them to include Microsoft and entrepreneurial skills.