Four AI-Proof Skills to Develop in Yourself and Your Workforce

There’s no question that AI is changing the face of work, including what skills employees need to have. In Justin J. Shaifer’s keynote at DevLearn 2024, he expanded on four skills that learning & development professionals will need to have in the future and that they will need to teach to the workforce at large: 

Prompt engineering  

While this skill was obsolete just a few years ago, everyone will now have to learn how to provide high-quality prompts to chatbots to get the output they need. Employees will have to discover skills to write precise prompts that AI can use to produce the desired content. However, expertise won’t disappear entirely. For example, you need to understand what makes a good email so that you can precisely prompt AI to make a good email. Without that expertise, it will be challenging to get the desired final product. 

Critical thinking 

At least for now, everyone still has to troubleshoot AI tools. For example, if a prompt doesn’t give the perfect results, then the employee will have to rewrite the prompt and re-execute it. And even if the prompt provides the desired output, we still have to check it for accuracy. This is where expertise and critical thinking come in. If an employee is working on something outside their experience or expertise, it is hard to check it to make sure the output looks good. Critical thinking is also essential to analyze the information and make sure that the output works well for its intended use.  

Screening AI tools 

Choosing the right tool will also be a new skill that employees need. They’ll first need to research the tool by watching YouTube videos on YouTube University and reading reviews to see how other people use and benefit from the tool. Then they’ll have to get a monthly subscription to the tool and learn how to use it to make a project or simplify a task. With things moving so fast, employees will also have to learn to keep an eye out for new tools that can help them complete their tasks better and faster than the current AI tool they’re using. 

Personal branding 

Justin J. Shaifer said, “Personal brands are the new job security.” In an age where people move from job to job, sometimes after only a few years, personal brands become increasingly important. To prepare people for a future workforce where they can succeed, it’s essential to make sure that when an employee is searched on the internet, a positive brand comes up. Employees might need help developing the substance, soft skills, and critical thinking necessary to create a cohesive personal brand on social media.