Supply of AI workers failing to meet demand - Government News

The government must take strategic action to ensure the nation's AI workforce will meet future demands because current supply is falling short, a new report warns. The report from CSIRO's data sciences arm Data61 focuses on how the nation can capture the full potential of artificial intelligence technology, which is already being used in a wide range of fields. The Artificial Intelligence: Solving problems, growing the economy and improving our quality of life report found that Australia currently has 6,600 AI specialist workers, which is up from 650 AI workers in 2014 and is predicted to grow. However it is well short of the up to 160,000 workers that may be required in the next ten years. "We estimate that by 2030 Australian industry will require a workforce of between 32,000 to 161,000 employees in computer vision, robotics, human language technologies, data science and other areas of AI expertise," the report says.