Council Post: Why We Need A Blue-Collar AI Workforce

VP Data & AI at ECS, roles have included co-founder at a data analytics startup, VP AI at Booz Allen, and Global Analytics Lead at Accenture. The 2020 LinkedIn U.S. Emerging Jobs Report identified the top 15 jobs over the previous five years and emphasized that "artificial intelligence and data science roles continue to proliferate across nearly every industry." Artificial intelligence specialist (No. 1) showed 74% annual growth, and data scientist (No. 3) and data engineer (No. 8) followed with 37% and 33% annual growth. But the problem is: we don't have enough skilled talent to fill these jobs, and it's a national imperative that we change the way we imagine, educate, recruit and upskill our technical workforce. We must abandon the flawed idea that AI jobs are only for people with master's degrees or PhDs with decades of experience.