Gen Zers and Millennials More Likely Than Older Generations to Embrace Continuous Learning; Also Feel More Stressed by Pressure to Learn New Skills — from prweb.com

Excerpt:

BOSTON (PRWEB) JANUARY 14, 2020
When it comes to updating professional skills, continuous learning is more important to Millennials and adult Gen Zers than to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, according to a survey of 1,048 adults, conducted by getAbstract, a company that summarizes top business books, articles and videos.

More than half of Millennials (58 percent) and adult Gen Zers (52 percent) said success in their careers depends on updating their skills and knowledge frequently, compared with 35 percent of Gen Xers and 34 percent of Baby Boomers.

However, younger workers are also more likely to feel stressed about the need to continuously update their skills and knowledge. Almost one-third (31 percent) of Millennials and Gen Zers said engaging in continuous learning stressed them out, compared with 19 percent of Gen Xers and 15 percent of Baby Boomers.

 

8 digital transformation trends for 2020 — from enterprisersproject.com by Stephanie Overby
Having some digital transformation fatigue on your team? You’re not alone: Here’s what else to watch for in the year ahead, digital leaders

Excerpts:

“2020 will still see the rapid scaling of digital initiatives across industries,” says Steve Hall, partner and president of global technology research and advisory firm ISG. “In many areas, CIOs and organizations have prepped their organizations for change but haven’t made the full leap to transforming their culture to fully embrace the change.”

Trends mentioned include:

  1. Digital operating models become mandatory
  2. More data, more problems
  3. AI takes center stage
  4. M&A shakes up IT services
  5. New digital transformation allies emerge
  6. Public cloud adoption expands
  7. New digital transformation metrics will emerge
  8. IT takes the long view on digital insights

 

 

120 AI predictions for 2020 — from forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpt:

As for the universe, it is an open book for the 120 senior executives featured here, all involved with AI, delivering 2020 predictions for a wide range of topics: Autonomous vehicles, deepfakes, small data, voice and natural language processing, human and augmented intelligence, bias and explainability, edge and IoT processing, and many promising applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies and tools. And there will be even more 2020 AI predictions, in a second installment to be posted here later this month.

 

Learning for a Living — from MIT Sloan Mgmt Review by Gianpiero Petriglieri

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Calls for learning have long been common at corporate retreats, professional conferences, and similar gatherings. But with the furious pace of change that technology has brought to business and society, they have become more urgent. Leaders in every sector seem to agree: Learning is an imperative, not a cliché. Without it, careers derail and companies fail. Talented people flock to employers that promise to invest in their development whether they will stay at the company or not.

If we are after transformative learning, what we need is a familiar yet open frame — a playground of sorts that magnifies our habits and the culture that breeds them so that we can examine both, and imagine and try new ways of being.

A boot camp must replicate workplace constraints to help us master ways of navigating them more efficiently. Whether it’s a course on, say, reaping insights from data analytics or a training session on giving respectful feedback, the space supports practice and improvement. A playground must remove most constraints to promote experimentation. Providing some distance from day-to-day reality allows us to get real in a deeper sense. A boot camp amplifies and exploits the shame of learning, helping us learn how not to be found wanting. A playground exposes and challenges that shame, helping us realize that if we were less anxious, it might be easier to claim what we want and discover how to get it.


From DSC:

A heads up. The way they use the word bootcamp is different from the way I’ve heard that word used these last 5-7 years. I think of bootcamps as more along the lines of a 10-12 week, intensive course — often involving programming. I don’t see them as internal training courses. But this article uses the word bootcamp in that way.

 

Evergreen Data Visualization  — from stephanieevergreen.com; with thanks to Mr. Pat Bailey for his post on LinkedIn.com about this resource

From DSC:
If you are using RSS feeds along with a product like Feedly, it might be worth subscribing to the stream of content originating at stephanieevergreen.com/blog/. I appreciated her designs in crafting/relaying narratives via the data that she has worked with.

Here’s an example posting:

 

From DSC:
Another good example of a learning ecosystem! Here’s a shout out to all of you checking in here:

  • Thanks for your time and for the check in!
  • Let’s all intentionally enhance our individual — as well as our organizations’ — learning ecosystems!

From Directed Learning to Self-Directed Learning: The role of L&D — from modernworkplacelearning.com

Self-directed learningby

 

Considering AI in hiring? As its use grows, so do the legal implications for employers. — from forbes.com by Alonzo Martinez; with thanks to Paul Czarapata for his posting on Twitter on this

Excerpt:

As employers grapple with a widespread labor shortage, more are turning to artificial intelligence tools in their search for qualified candidates.

Hiring managers are using increasingly sophisticated AI solutions to streamline large parts of the hiring process. The tools scrape online job boards and evaluate applications to identify the best fits. They can even stage entire online interviews and scan everything from word choice to facial expressions before recommending the most qualified prospects.

But as the use of AI in hiring grows, so do the legal issues surrounding it. Critics are raising alarms that these platforms could lead to discriminatory hiring practices. State and federal lawmakers are passing or debating new laws to regulate them. And that means organizations that implement these AI solutions must not only stay abreast of new laws, but also look at their hiring practices to ensure they don’t run into legal trouble when they deploy them.

 

The 20 top tech skills that employers want and that can help you find a job, according to recruiting site Indeed — from businessinsider.com by Rosalie Chan and Bani Sapra

Excerpt:

The job search site Indeed released a report this month about the top tech skills of 2019 based on job descriptions that are being posted.

Andrew Flowers, an economist at Indeed, says that in today’s job market, there are two major trends that drive the top skills in tech. The first is the rise of data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The second is the rise of cloud computing.

“Python has had explosive growth,” Flowers told Business Insider. “If I’m around the dinner table and a nephew asks what should I learn? Having done this report, I would say, learn Python.”

 
 

MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab releases groundbreaking research on AI and the future of work — from liwaiwai.com

Excerpt:

IBM believes 100% of jobs will eventually change due to artificial intelligence, and new empirical research released last October 30 from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab reveals how. The research, The Future of Work: How New Technologies Are Transforming Tasks, used advanced machine learning techniques to analyze 170 million online job postings in the United States between 2010 and 2017. It shows, in the early stages of AI adoption, how tasks of individual jobs are transforming and the impact on employment and wages.

“As new technologies continue to scale within businesses and across industries, it is our responsibility as innovators to understand not only the business process implications, but also the societal impact,” said Martin Fleming, vice president and chief economist of IBM. “To that end, this empirical research from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab sheds new light on how tasks are reorganizing between people and machines as a result of AI and new technologies.”

While most jobs will change as new technologies, such as AI, scale, the research shows few jobs will actually disappear. What is fundamentally changing is the way we work. 

 

Key findings from the paper here — from mitibmwatsonailab.mit.edu

  1. Tasks are Shifting Between People and Machines – But the Change has been Small
  2. Tasks Increasing in Value Tend to Require Soft Skills
  3. High- and Low-Wage Jobs are Gaining Tasks and Earning More

 

Also related/see:

Brookings: AI will heavily affect tech and white-collar jobs — from venturebeat.com by Khari Johnson

Excerpt:

AI is set to have a big impact on high-wage, white-collar, and tech jobs, according to a new Brookings Institution study released today. The report analyzes overlap between job descriptions and patent database text, using NLP to assign each job an exposure score.

“High-tech digital services such as software publishing and computer system design — that before had low automation susceptibility — exhibit quite high exposure, as AI tools and applications pervade the technology sector,” the report reads.

 

6 critical IT skills for the next decade: Bay Area CIO of the Year winners share — from enterprisersproject.com by Ginny Hamilton
What skills will IT talent need most? Six award-winning CIOs discuss the top skills on their radar screens – from AI to emotional intelligence

I’d highly recommend all technology professionals build their external network and contribute to the external professional community as early in your career as possible. The wisdom of the tech community is incredibly important, and because you have to curate this over an extended period of time, there is no accelerated option you can tap at a later date. Technology professionals need to constantly be re-inventing themselves to stay relevant. As technology evolves, so too do the people and roles around it. Constant change is the steady state today and as I tell my team, “The pain of change is mandatory, it is the suffering that is optional. And if you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.”

 

From DSC:
This is an especially good read for students who are considering going into a tech-focused career. If you decide to go that route, you had better be ready for constant change….constant, lifelong learning. And as you get older, you will face age discrimination. Enjoy the jobs that you get from ages 18-30 (perhaps even up to age 35). After that, it gets much tougher. Hopefully, that situation will change as more organizations get sued for allowing this discrimination to continue (perhaps implementing is the more appropriate word…vs. allowing it to occur). Here are some examples of those kinds of issues/suits. But for now, that’s the state of things…at least here in the United States.

 

FTI 2020 Trend Report for Entertainment, Media, & Technology [FTI]

 

FTI 2020 Trend Report for Entertainment, Media, & Technology — from futuretodayinstitute.com

Our 3rd annual industry report on emerging entertainment, media and technology trends is now available.

  • 157 trends
  • 28 optimistic, pragmatic and catastrophic scenarios
  • 10 non-technical primers and glossaries
  • Overview of what events to anticipate in 2020
  • Actionable insights to use within your organization

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Synthetic media offers new opportunities and challenges.
  • Authenticating content is becoming more difficult.
  • Regulation is coming.
  • We’ve entered the post-fixed screen era.
  • Voice Search Optimization (VSO) is the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
  • Digital subscription models aren’t working.
  • Advancements in AI will mean greater efficiencies.

 

 

Welcome to the future! The future of work is… — from gettingsmart.com

Excerpt:

The future of work is here, and with it, new challenges — so what does this mean for teaching and learning? It means more contribution and young people learning how to make a difference. In our exploration of the #futureofwork, sponsored by eduInnovation and powered by Getting Smart, we dive into what’s happening, what’s coming and how schools might prepare.

 

 

 

As pressure to upskill grows, 5 models emerge — from forbes.com by Allison Dulin Salisbury

Excerpt:

The Business Roundtable made big news in August when it redefined the role of corporations to focus on not just share price, but stakeholders. According to the nearly 200 CEOS who joined the statement, making that shift requires that employers not only compensate employees fairly, and provide “important benefits,” it  “includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world.”

Whatever your preferred statistics, the message is clear: Millions of American workers need new skills, and that number is only set to grow. This talent mismatch isn’t just bad for individuals, it’s a challenge to businesses’ continued productivity and growth. That makes investments that help workers build new skills, and chart a course toward economic mobility, not only mission-aligned—but a business imperative. 

In response to a growing imperative, we are experiencing a sort of renaissance at the intersection of education and corporate training.  

 

As pressure to upskill grows, 5 models emerge

 

A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job — from washingtonpost.com by Drew Harwell
HireVue claims it uses artificial intelligence to decide who’s best for a job. Outside experts call it ‘profoundly disturbing.’

Excerpt:

An artificial intelligence hiring system has become a powerful gatekeeper for some of America’s most prominent employers, reshaping how companies assess their workforce — and how prospective employees prove their worth.

Designed by the recruiting-technology firm HireVue, the system uses candidates’ computer or cellphone cameras to analyze their facial movements, word choice and speaking voice before ranking them against other applicants based on an automatically generated “employability” score.

 

The system, they argue, will assume a critical role in helping decide a person’s career. But they doubt it even knows what it’s looking for: Just what does the perfect employee look and sound like, anyway?

“It’s a profoundly disturbing development that we have proprietary technology that claims to differentiate between a productive worker and a worker who isn’t fit, based on their facial movements, their tone of voice, their mannerisms,” said Meredith Whittaker, a co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a research center in New York.

 

From DSC:
If you haven’t been screened out by an algorithm from an Applicant Tracking System recently, then you haven’t been looking for a job in the last few years. If that’s the case:

  • Then you might not be very interested in this posting.
  • You will be very surprised in the future, when you do need to search for a new job.

Because the truth is, it’s very difficult to get the eyes of a human being to even look at your resume and/or to meet you in person. The above posting/article should disturb you even more. I don’t think that the programmers have programmed everything inside an experienced HR professional’s mind.

 

Also see:

  • In case after case, courts reshape the rules around AI — from muckrock.com
    AI Now Institute recommends improvements and highlights key AI litigation
    Excerpt:
    When undercover officers with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office bought crack cocaine from someone in 2015, they couldn’t actually identify the seller. Less than a year later, though, Willie Allen Lynch was sentenced to 8 years in prison, picked through a facial recognition system. He’s still fighting in court over how the technology was used, and his case and others like it could ultimately shape the use of algorithms going forward, according to a new report.
 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian