How Generative AI Has Become a Must-Have Skill
Many fail to understand that generative AI isn’t just a subfield within data science. Thanks to an expanding list of tools, it has become a must-have skill. You may be asking yourself, why that’s the case? Or you may not even believe you don’t need generative AI to enhance existing skills. Well let’s go through each of these claims, and more, and discover why generative AI has become the new must-have skill of the 21st century.
It’s In Demand — You Don’t Want to Become Irrelevant
Generative AI has become a skill demanded by more and more employers over the last year. Just like with any new technology, companies, governments, and other entities recognize the benefit brought by AI and look to harness it for their own missions. But unlike other times when a new breakthrough technology entered the market, the use of generative AI has increasingly been seen as a unique skill. This is due to its potential to enhance just about any existing skill set you have and its ability to help workers pick up new skills faster.
As Forbes noted last month, more and more employers will be specifically looking toward a workforce that can leverage AI. One good thing to keep in mind is that if you pick up generative AI as a skill, it’s one of the fastest, cheapest, and easiest ways to future-proof your career. One company that is taking the lead is Microsoft. They’ve worked closely within their company and outside to enhance workers and their service with generative AI. They also constantly provide educational opportunities for those who wish to use AI better.
Overall, It’s a Useful Tool
We’ve all been there. Times when working on a project seems to be going nowhere. You have other items on the “to-do” list that must be addressed, but your main project has tied you down for the foreseeable future. Every data scientist, analyst, engineer, or programmer you’ve experienced this unfortunate situation. But, what if I say, generative AI can help you?
Believe it or not, one of the superpowers of generative AI is helping people with productivity issues. As Makeuseof.com noted, ChatGPT can help you get the ball rolling during your workday in seven different ways. And we’re sure there are a lot of other ways. For example, you may be an excellent scientist but an awful writer. When you’re on a team, clear communication is critical and you can cut the time it takes to write an important email to a fraction. This can be done in two ways. Either have ChatGPT review the email before you send it out (checking for grammar, spelling, and other structural issues), or if you provide the prompt with enough information through an outline, it can write the email for you.
Both can save you a ton of time during the work day so you can remove a bottleneck that otherwise would have eaten valuable time.
Helps with anomaly detection
Now let’s get out of the big picture overview of how generative AI can help you and take a look at a specific example. Did you know that generative AI can help you detect anomalies in your model? Not only can it be done faster than with only a human presence, but it can reduce resource costs before they are out of control or worse.
As this paper from Science Direct shows, machine and deep learning models have been shown to detect anomalies quickly and effectively. Once found, a human reviews the data and can either confirm or disregard the AI’s flag. Of course, you understand that working with massive data sets and increasingly complex models can make detecting anomalies more and more difficult. But by utilizing generative AI, you can enhance your anomaly-detecting superpower and ensure that the project stays on course.
Supplement Your Skills
As mentioned in the Forbes article from May, more and more companies are seeking out those with generative AI skills. That’s due to how the tools associated with AI enhance and complement the worker. And this is where our final section comes in. With generative AI, you can supplement data skills that you may feel are underwhelming and become more creative and communicative.
ChatGPT and Bard both can help you ensure that your SQL query runs correctly, but they can also help you in terms of being more creative in how you communicate that data before you. For example, ChatGPT can provide ideas to add a bit more context to your presentation. MidJourney can give you the ability to create stunning visuals that showcase your idea without saying a single word. And as you can imagine, there are so many other tools.
Overall, generative AI is only limited by the imagination of the user and if one learns how to harness the power of AI, they’ll be able to take their skill set in a direction they wouldn’t have considered in the past.
Conclusion
What do you think? Generative AI is a great way to beef up one’s skillset, especially if you want to future-proof your goals. But you’re likely now wondering where you can go to learn more about generative AI, and how to use it. Well, I’m glad you asked!
ODSC is hosting a free Generative AI Summit on July 20th. Get your pass today, and come away with new insights and enhanced generative AI skills. So, what are you waiting for?
Originally posted on OpenDataScience.com
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