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OPINION 6.5.2021 Alexiei Dingli and Rose Marie Azzopardi Prof Alexiei Dingli, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Dr Rose Marie Azzopardi, an economist focusing on the labour market, are the lead researchers on this three-year project C hoosing a future career is always a daunting task. Young students try to evaluate their strengths or weaknesses together with their dislikes and likings towards var- ious jobs. ey spend months ponder- ing about the pros and cons of one career path against the other with the support of their parents. In the end, they have to make a choice. is is probably one of the most critical decisions in their life which will mark their fu- ture journey. Even though it is not cast in stone, very few then dare to switch jobs. e rea- sons are various; the availabili- ty of time, the rigidness in our educational system, the lack of opportunities, and the list of reasons can be neverending. e truth is that it is hard to change a career later on in life. Because of this, children tend to opt for the same old jobs. e secure ones that give them a fallback if things don't work out as planned. Even though this was not a bad strategy so far, the situa- tion is rapidly changing. "Job security" is definitely not a term that will feature in the dictionaries of the future. Ac- cording to the World Econom- ic Forum (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2020, the list of jobs whose demand will drastically decrease is unbelievable. is includes Accountants, Audi- tors, Secretaries, Financial An- alysts, Customer Care Agents, Bank Tellers, and many other well-known jobs. ese jobs were reputed as secure up to a few years ago. Now, they are verging on the risk of extinc- tion. What changed is that emerg- ing technologies such as Ar- tificial Intelligence (AI) have become so sophisticated that they can take over tasks that were once within the remit of human expertise. Jobs that deal with number crunching, such as accountancy jobs, can be easily substituted by ma- chines. Remember that numbers constitute the natural language of computers, so solving nu- merical problems is a piece of cake for them. For other more daunting tasks such as communicating with people using human lan- guages (English, Italian, Fench, etc.), computers are improving by the day. Microsoft claims that its transcription system is even better than human pro- fessionals. Google duplex can call peo- ple, engage in a meaningful conversation over the phone and purchase different services from them. ere are various AI systems managing custom- er care systems too, so it is only a matter of time until they take over these roles entirely. Because of this, we should not prepare for today's world but rather for that of the fu- ture. Luckily for us, the WEF report also indicates the job roles that will be in demand. ese include Data Scientists, AI Experts, Digital Specialists, Information Security Profes- sionals, Robotic Engineers and various others. Of course, this is not surpris- ing since the writing has been on the wall for quite a while. It is enough to remember that Europe is already facing a shortage of around half a mil- lion ICT professionals. If you were to add the ancillary jobs that service the ICT industry, another two million unfilled vacancies can be added to that number. Now consider the fact that our dependence on ICT is continuously growing. We all have multiple devices (such as a smartwatch, mobile phone, tablet, laptop and a person- al computer, to name a few). Remember that the level of automation in the industry is reaching the 50% mark, and more companies are investing in AI. One does not need to be a ge- nius to realise that we will need many more ICT professionals in the future. Luckily for us, the EU and most countries are pushing for real change. e President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, de- clared in her State of the Un- ion speech that this will be the digital decade of Europe. e continent needs to focus on three main priorities; han- dling data, setting up adequate infrastructure, and pushing emerging technologies, par- ticularly AI. In fact, the EU is investing billions of Euros in AI. But this will not be enough if we do not have a trained workforce and visionary entrepreneurs ready to take Europe to the next stage. at is why we need to guide our children towards future jobs because their choices to- day will impact our world of tomorrow. To tackle this challenge, the HSBC Malta Foundation is sponsoring e Human Cap- ital Research Project. is is supported by the Ministry of Education, the Malta Chamber of Commerce, the Malta Busi- ness Bureau, the University of Malta and the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology. e project aims to analyse the current and future eco- nomic environments, assess- ing their impact on Malta's labour market while also high- lighting the skills needed. Further details can be found at https://www.facebook.com/ HumanCapitalResearchPro- ject Getting a job in the world of tomorrow

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