Workers Take AI Bootcamps as Companies Embrace Artificial Intelligence

Tech workers are scrambling to add artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to their resumes.

As The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Sunday (May 26), it’s a shift happening as tech companies are also trying to reposition themselves as AI firms, and trying to get their staff to be more savvy about the technology.

“I’ve been leading with an AI-tailored resume for the last two to three months,” Asif Dhanani, a former technical product manager at Amazon, told WSJ.

Dhanani has struggled to find a job, and has decided to invest $6,800 in a two-week online AI boot camp from Deep Atlas.

“The skills building for me is a worthwhile investment,” he said, even if it doesn’t help him find a new job.

Tony Phillips, co-founder of the Deep Atlas boot camp, told WSJ he has seen a marked increase in the urgency that tech workers feel about the need to boost their AI skills, with the camp recently adding another five slots to their summer session.

“People started to see the writing on the wall that their jobs really could be obsolete,” Phillips said. “You’re probably not going to get replaced by AI. You’re going to be replaced by someone who knows AI and does your job.”

Experts that PYMNTS has spoken with stressed over and over that AI should be viewed as a way to augment and enhance the work done by humans rather than replacing human workers.

“We are in that economic cycle where every cost you can beat out of the process is necessary right now. … How to save money and how to eliminate those manual steps in the process is top of mind,” Ingo Payments CEO Drew Edwards told PYMNTS.

“AI is going to be an imperative for every company, and what you do with AI is what will differentiate your products,” Heather Bellini, president and chief financial officer at InvestCloud, told PYMNTS in an interview last summer. “Functionally, it might get rid of a lot of the manual work people don’t want to do anyway and extract them up to a level where they can do more things that have a direct impact on the business.”

Meanwhile, last month saw a group of big tech firms, Google and Microsoft among them, team to create a task force dedicated to equipping the workforce for the AI era, “responding to the critical demand for AI-proficient professionals in changing job markets,” as PYMNTS wrote.

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