Building AI Expertise

The business world is always rapidly changing thanks to the emergence of new technologies and skills in the market. Companies always have to be nimble when considering their employees’ capabilities – if the employees don’t have the skills to meet the market standards, they might fall behind the competition. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest technology to enter the market, and it is primed to change soon the way employees spend their workdays.. Soon, monotonous tasks such as drafting emails and taking notes during meetings will be handled exclusively by AI. They can also be used as a thought partner for more complicated tasks, such as helping to create the writing structure of a memo or designing the framework for a model. 

AI prompt engineering is the method that is used to communicate the instructions for each of these tasks to the AI platform. There is an art and a science to structuring the instructions in a way that is easy to interpret and follow for generative AI. There are many different styles to communicate these prompts, including chain of thought, chain of symbols, generated knowledge prompting, least to most prompting, and non-text prompting. The options grow even more when non-text asks come into the picture, such as AI-generated images and videos. This can include negative prompts, textual inversion, and prompt injection. 

Unfortunately, the number of employees who are actually literate in the language of AI is pretty low. 81% of IT professionals are confident in their abilities, but in reality, only 12% actually have the skills to perform prompt engineering effectively. For example, an ill-informed employee might merely ask AI to make them a rooster. However, an obvious and well-structured prompt would get much more specific and specify the desired number of colors and styles. This would produce the results that the employee is looking for with a minimal number of iterations. In short, what you say and how you say it matter a lot to AI.

Business leaders are becoming more and more aware of the pressing need for their employees to be equipped with this knowledge. AI can make their organizations more productive and efficient. If they don’t join the AI revolution, their competitors are sure to. Therefore, two out of three leaders wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills. 60% of IT decision makers are aware that AI is currently the largest skill gap in their workforce. There is a 50% hiring gap between AI jobs and AI job roles, so it is more essential than ever that employees learn the ropes with this modern tool. 

Many professionals are familiar with the high level basics of AI, but lack the in-depth knowledge required to truly advance their careers. Most desk workers don’t know how to get the best out of the tool and lower their amount of work during the day. Most IT leaders are also aware of this gap – 72% of them believe AI skill gaps need to be urgently addressed if their companies want to remain competitive in the AI revolution. 

Thankfully, there are online, skills-based courses for becoming familiar with AI. These courses offer certificates to those that complete a certain amount of training hours. There are special modules for financial management, marketing, Excel, among general courses that introduce the benefits of AI to a worker in the first place. Soon, there will be other options for education, entrepreneurship, human resources, and project management. Employees will be able to reskill, upskill, and cross skill effectively, depending on their existing comfortability with AI. After 6 to 8 weeks, course takers should be comfortable with advanced prompt engineering, along with many other useful AI related skills. 

The AI revolution is not going away anytime soon. In fact, we are just getting started. Soon, generative AI will be the staple of every workplace. In order to not fall behind, both companies and employees need to quickly upskill on how to use AI effectively. Prompt engineering is one of the most valuable places to start when learning how to extract the most value out from an AI platform. Online certificate-based courses can be a great way to develop these skills. The world is changing in favor of AI, and it is important to stay ahead.