Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Matt Jacobs, Senior Vice President of Commercial Systems at Penguin Computing
Skills Growth Will Drive the Democratization of Artificial Intelligence
Gartner Inc. predicts, "2020
will be a pivotal year in artificial
intelligence (AI)-related employment dynamics, as AI will
become a positive job motivator." The research goes on to note, "AI
will create 2.3 million jobs by 2020, while eliminating 1.8 million."
At Penguin Computing, while we
are currently experiencing significant growth in our AI Practice because of the
growth of this market, we are concerned about the true democratization of AI
due to the current skills gap.
We
agree the market will be reacting to shifting employment dynamics over the next
two years. We also predict that AI innovation will rapidly advance and create
new talent needs during that time. However, broader democratization of AI
will likely not occur until there are enough people with the skills to create
the training and inference algorithms necessary for wide usage. That's where
the skills gap exists today. That's why we believe the lack of
professionals skilled in the disciplines required to fully harness the power of
AI will leave many AI roles unfilled for several years and broader
democratization will not occur until the 2021-22 time frame.
To solve this challenge, companies will need to
source practitioners who understand both data science and
machine learning disciplines. Data science is about data set curation and
finding trends in that data. Machine learning is using those data sets to train
machines to make their own independent inferences in new data sets. More
experts in both data science (training side) and machine learning (systems
side) will be necessary to close the skills gap. Currently, very few
individuals, if any, have the ability to handle both areas.
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About the Author
Matt is responsible for building out the global partner ecosystem for Penguin Computing, setting vertical market growth plans across commercial markets, and overseeing the commercial sales team. He joined Penguin Computing in June 2000 and was responsible for both sales and setting and executing the company’s high performance computing (HPC) strategy. In the process, he and his team grew the Penguin Computing business exponentially. Prior to joining Penguin, Matt served as the Western Regional Sales Manager for the Server and Storage division of American Megatrends, Inc. (AMI). There, he significantly increased AMI’s presence in the Western U.S. and was instrumental in the formation of the company’s Linux strategy. He holds a B.A. from the University of Georgia.