Integrating AI proficiency: How firms can close their AI talent gap across all levels

As artificial intelligence (AI) makes ever-greater inroads into organisations’ operations, closing the AI skills gap has become crucial to embrace the opportunities that such technologies bring while managing its risks effectively.  

To acquire the right talent quickly, some companies choose to leverage AI-proficient data scientists from within the organisation. While this may be a short-term solution to infuse the necessary know-how within the business unit, long-term success requires the growth of AI capabilities for all professionals. Not only must they augment the AI capabilities of their domain experts—staff who are specialists in their departmental fields—they must do so for all employees to boost the organisation’s collective intelligence, and must further ensure that management and boards gain the necessary AI skills to lead. This will facilitate the seamless integration of AI-driven solutions with the specialised knowledge and skillsets necessary to capture emerging opportunities. 

Organisations may consider this complementary approach by incorporating skills-mapping to identify where internal skills exist and where they are lacking, as part of a Green by Design strategy which embraces talent acquisition and upskilling as key drivers for transformation.  

Not only will this approach rapidly ensure their workforces have a steady supply of the right AI talent for an AI-enabled future; these employees’ knowledge of AI’s risks and opportunities will make their organisations more cyber-secure and improve compliance. 

When it comes to practical steps, the primary focus is to develop the foundational AI literacy of domain experts. These professionals become proficient in harnessing AI for better outcomes from the start, while remaining cognisant of the safe, ethical and responsible deployment of AI in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape.

It is also crucial that teams can access AI training tailored to their roles. With comprehensive AI training, staff can keep pace with their evolving workplace, seamlessly integrating domain expertise and AI proficiency, boosting the organisation’s cyber-security abilities and strengthening compliance and governance. 

Admittedly, there might be challenges with integrating AI into every professional’s toolkit due to the technical rigour and broad-based applications covered in AI training. To mitigate this, it is essential to develop targeted programmes that can equip non-technical employees with practical, domain-relevant AI knowledge along with the skills necessary to comply with regulatory requirements. These programmes can impart staff with a sound understanding on how to comply with their internal AI ethical and governance rules, along with AI’s cybersecurity risks. Meeting these requirements means existing training pathways must move beyond teaching only basic knowledge or highly specialised skills and, using scalable roadmaps tailored to domains, help employees’ AI skills become an extension of their existing expertise.

While this approach to improved skills and governance is uncommon, it has seen an uptick in some domains and industries. For example, professional services firms equip their employees with a range of online courses with insights not only into the fundamentals of AI technology and how AI affects the internal audit function, but also on AI governance and risk management. Leading financial services institutions have also begun rolling out AI training for new staff in asset and wealth management units. This type of wider approach is crucial on a cross-domain scale to ensure every employee is equipped to spot opportunities while mitigating the risks that AI adoption brings. 

The second core focus is to use a layered approach by providing a foundational level of AI and data literacy for all domains, followed with branching pathways tailored to specific functions to craft a future where each role has some AI proficiency. In this way, organisations can achieve the twin goal of improving the day-to-day AI skills of their workforce, while building up regulatory compliance and adherence to their ethical and governance requirements.

Importantly, this layered approach is applicable from a whole-of-organisation perspective, including senior management and boards, as sound AI governance and risk management cuts across all levels. With AI embedded into the business, executives must be sufficiently familiar with the technology to understand the governance and risk implications. In Singapore and the region, board associations have published AI-related guidance for executive or C-suite levels, and organisations can access these to learn how senior leadership can create the appropriate guardrails to harness the benefits of AI ethically.

Worldwide, there have been efforts to close the AI talent gap through collaborative efforts by unifying the right resources to tap collective intelligence. Singapore has contributed to efforts in the region and beyond to build an international AI ecosystem, including co-leading ASEAN’s Guide on AI Governance and Ethics – Generative AI and encouraging an open approach through initiatives like the AI Verify Foundation. Launched by the authorities, the original framework outlines key AI principles such as fairness, explainability and accountability, and has since evolved to include generative AI. It also offers an open-source toolkit that businesses can use for internal testing and risk management, which businesses can leverage to nurture AI literacy across the entire organisation on a cross-domain scale. 

While global regulations in this space need to be further aligned, embracing AI from the get-go is a prerequisite to avoiding obsolescence. That means deploying AI in a way that is mindful of the risks and ensuring it is used responsibly, meeting organisations’ governance and ethical obligations. As AI continues to advance, organisations that upskill at all levels and across domains will not only meet their evolving compliance and governance needs—they will likely find themselves far ahead of their competitors in an AI-dominated future.