ARTIFICIAL isntelligence (AI) needs to be incorporated within the curriculum at all levels for Jamaica to become competitive in the global workspace, according to one university professor.

“We should be moving beyond the traditional degree structure and actually thinking about the kind of skill sets that people are going to need over the next 10/20 years,” said Professor Anthony Clayton, Alcan professor of caribbean sustainable development at The University of the West Indies, while speaking with the Jamaica Observer.

He shared a study by Goldman Sachs which concluded that up to seven per cent of all jobs globally could completely disappear and be replaced by AI and automation. About 63 per cent of jobs will still exis — but they will be done differently using AI — and the last 30 per cent of jobs in the workforce will be unaffected.

He suggests that to survive this new technological wave it’s important that graduates have more than one skill and pursue degrees that are hybrid, both traditional with some form of technology aspect. In giving an example, Clayton said law degrees should now also be tied with environmental science or computer science, or a first degree and a law conversion.

In analysing different jobs like administration and the legal profession, he says about half of those tasks will disappear.

“A lot of the basic processing tasks will be automated, and the same with law. Half of a lawyer’s job, which includes searching for precedence in particular cases and handling the administration of clients’ funds and billing, half of those will disappear and lawyers will be able to work closely with their clients,” he said.

The impact of AI on particular sectors of the economy will affect countries differently, while in economies that are well advanced like the US or UK maybe only 10 per cent of jobs will disappear. The same would not apply to developing economies.

“If you look at the less-advanced economies in places like sub-Saharan Africa then it’s actually something like 80 per cent of all forms of work in activities that could be substituted by AI and robotics,” he revealed.

While he’s sure all jobs won’t be replaced he says basic jobs will potentially become vulnerable. Jamaica stands in the middle of digital advancement so it’s still difficult to know exactly what percentage of jobs would be affected, as positions are currently being revised. However, a few sectors, undoubtedly will be affected.

“Record-keeping, cashiers, people doing data entry, payroll, secretarial work, receptionists — a lot of services will disappear very quickly,” he said while listing out jobs he’s certain will no longer require human effort. Other areas he cited include shipping and logistics, construction, and architecture.

An estimate from the World Economic Forum is that by 2027 there will be 14 million net job losses worldwide to AI, and most will be from people doing basic record-keeping, administration, or secretarial-type paperwork. However, AI will create new jobs that will require new skills, and this is where Clayton is requesting that the country focuses on moving forward, upskilling. If a nation is not taught these skills it will be left behind and jobs will become increasingly difficult to find.

“Our best guess is that the jobs that are going to be in demand are the jobs that require cognitive skills and problem-solving skills, creative thinking skills. And the people who are going into the workforce who’s got good problem-solving skills and who score highly for creative thinking, who have a high level of technological literacy, and you can work very well with other people, [those] are going to do well,” Clayton told to the Business Observer.

Currently business owners are complaining about a lack of skilled workers. This is likely to continue as the definition of “skilled workers” evolve. According to Clayton, the sort of skill that businesses are looking for now include intellectual curiosity.

“People who are committed to lifelong learning… they are constantly reskilling, self-motivated, and [possess] the kind of agility that you need to move from task to task and work on different complex problems, so if you have those skills you’ll be in high demand,” he added.

He further explained that a huge problem that exists locally is the turning out of a lot of people from the school system with skill sets that are about to be redundant because AI and automation will change the way work is done. He says the education system has not been doing a good job of teaching children problem-solving skills, nor has it been looking at multi-skilling the population.

“It [education system] is in bad need of reform, a really quite radical reform. We can’t keep doing traditional degree subjects anymore; this is not going to be what the future labour market requires,” he stressed. “We need to be teaching on a more modular basis so that people can assemble a combination of studies, and this will enable them to adjust to a much more fluid and rapidly evolving labour market.”

To reform the education system, he says, urgent investment and serious attention need to be turned to reskilling the teaching profession, raising the status of teachers, and rewarding them appropriately.

“We need to be more demanding of our teachers in terms of the kinds of candidates that we’re trying to recruit. We need to be very significantly increasing their pay and improving their conditions — and that’s us [Jamaica] making an investment in the future of our country,” he urged.

As a lecturer himself he says it’s frustrating because he sees how much needs to be done and how little time we have left.

“I wish more people would see the urgency of this because, otherwise, we are going to be competing in an increasingly difficult environment. It’s getting harder to compete because we don’t have the skill set and the workforce that we’re going to need,” said Clayton.