With the pandemic changing the job scenario and opening up newer avenues, upskilling has become a necessity, with a record high of 79 percent of professionals (including freshers) planning to upskill this year. Another 11 percent of respondents said they are considering the option. According to a report by edtech company Great Learning, titled'Upskilling Outlook in India 2022', the emergence of newer domains like Web 3.0, metaverse, NFTs, etc., has propelled this growth. Meanwhile, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and software development were the top domains for upskilling, with over 43 percent of the respondents expressing their intent in data-focused domains, such as data science, AI, machine learning, and analytics, it added. Based on internal data from Great Learning, a survey was conducted by Pyxis with about 1,000 respondents from cities, including Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune. Respondents were from information technology (IT) and business process management (BPM), banking, education and training, and automobiles, among other industries.

SAVING money and time is one thing artificial intelligence (AI) can do well, and American Express (AMEX) Global Business Travel (GBT) is using the technology to deliver savings every time clients book a hotel room. In an exclusive interview with Tech Wire Asia during a trip to Singapore, Chief Information and Technology Officer David Thompson spills the beans on the company's AI-based booking solution. As AMEX GBT books hotel rooms for clients, it follows travel policies handed down to them (preferred hotels, agreements, etc). However, as most hotel's inventory changes frequently, opportunities to move the traveler into a lower cost hotel room with the same amenities often arises. "This is where we found the opportunity to leverage AI. We trained AI to understand where the hotel room is and what the amenities are."

In some cases, these newer roles have snapped up command and control of newer enterprise technology, leaving CIOs with portfolios of legacy responsibilities. Enter artificial intelligence (AI), the latest technology to emerge as a transformative business priority. AI provides the opportunity that Paula Tolliver, Intel corporate vice president and CIO, thinks her peers have been waiting for, creating new room in which the CIO can thrive as a visionary and business strategist. "Over the past 10 years the slope of innovation has increased significantly, and with it the number of new technologies and capabilities coming to market," Tolliver noted. "That also means the number of opportunities for the CIO to create much more significant impact on the company's strategy has also increased."