Only a quarter of the professionals in certain segments of the information technology sector are extremely or very familiar with artificial intelligence (IT), according to a survey by global digital trust association ISACA. About 46% classify themselves as a beginner, underscoring the need for sustained upskilling.
The study shows that 40% of the organisations surveyed do not have structured AI training; 32% say the training is limited to staff who work in tech-related positions. These numbers show a gap and highlights that organisations need to step up their readiness.
The survey covered 3,270 IT audit, risk, governance, privacy and cybersecurity professionals to create a pulse study on AI. It highlights multiple aspects, including knowledge gaps, policies, risks, jobs around AI and the actions required to be taken today.
At the strategic level, just 15% of the organisations surveyed report having a formalised AI policy. The lack of such policies can hinder a strategic look at AI implementation, lead to haphazard project execution and create confusion in terms of what gets prioritised for implementation.
Prioritising AI ethics
One of the key factors that emerged from the study is that only 34% of the organisations give enough attention to AI ethical standards. Today, 70% believe employees are using any type of AI, and 60% believe employees are using generative AI.This gives rise to the possibility of risks. In fact, 60% of the people surveyed say they are worried or extremely worried that generative AI will be exploited by bad actors.ET Online
However, with the growing importance of the need for digital trust professionals, 78% say that AI will have a positive or a neutral impact on their own careers. Even then, 85% say they need to increase their skills and knowledge in AI within 2 years to advance or retain their job. And 94% believe that it will be critical for them to learn AI skills, the survey shows.
What does it mean for organisations?
The need to step up the right kind of training becomes critical in such a situation. In fact, Instahyre recently released an ebook on efficient methods to assess skills in potential candidates. The ebook reported that 94% of the people they spoke with stayed longer in companies with learning investments and 26% have seen a boost in productivity with project-based learning.
The ebook highlighted that collaboration on software projects using tools like GitHub is an excellent source for companies to find the right developer profiles, including their previous contributions, repositories, etc. This shifts the discussion from just an interview-based hiring to demonstrable skill-based hiring for technical roles.
Not just that, the ebook also highlighted that 82.7% of the developers contributed to open source projects, and that makes this method of assessing more important in today’s world for tech roles.
