Cisco and a group of eight leading companies including Accenture, Eightfold, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft and SAP as well as six advisors have launched the AI-Enabled Information and Communication Technology Workforce Consortium focused on upskilling and reskilling roles most likely to be impacted by AI.
Consortium members represent a cross section of companies innovating on the cutting edge of AI that also understand the current and impending impact of AI on the workforce. Individually, Consortium members have documented opportunities and challenges presented by AI. The collaborative effort enables their organisations to coalesce insights, recommend action plans, and activate findings within their respective broad spheres of influence.
“At the US Department of Commerce, we’re focused on fueling advanced technology and deepening trade and investment relationships with partners and allies around the world,” says US secretary of commerce Gina Raimondo. “This work is helping us build a strong and competitive economy, propelled by a talented workforce that’s enabling workers to get into the good quality, high-paying, family-sustaining jobs of the future.
The Consortium will leverage its members and advisors to recommend and amplify reskilling and upskilling training programs that are inclusive and can benefit multiple stakeholders – students, career changers, current IT workers, employers, and educators – in order to skill workers at scale to engage in the AI era.
To that end, Consortium members have established forward thinking goals with skills development and training programs to positively impact over 95-million individuals around the world over the next 10 years. These member goals include:* IBM to skill 30-million individuals by 2030 in digital skills, including 2-million in AI.