Businesses increasing investment in AI to make good skills gaps
Business leaders are prioritising AI in a bid to fill roles and make good skills gaps over the next 12 months, with two-thirds reporting that they will increase investment in AI as a result.
But this trend will also hammer entry-level roles, with AI being used to reduce headcounts â and to cut costs â rather than increase investment in skills and training.
Thatâs according to new research from the British Standards Institution (BSI), Evolving Together: Flourishing in the AI Workforce, which combined an analysis of corporate annual reports over the past year with a survey of more than 850 business leaders.
Indeed, just over 40% of business leaders reported that AI is being used to facilitate headcount reductions, while one-third said that their organisation looked to AI, first, before hiring new staff.
More ominously, perhaps, the business leaders also increasingly believe that AI is as good as or better than a human member of staff, with one quarter suggesting that most tasks performed by an entry-level employee could be performed by AI instead. Moreover, the âunit cost” of tasks performed by AI will likely decline as adoption increases â increasingly stacking the cost advantage on the side of AI.
Indeed, AI would appear to be adopted more aggressively in large organisations compared to SMRs, with almost 70% of business leaders pointing to AI for growth in the coming years, compared to half (51%) of SMEs claiming that AI will be crucial for the growth of their organisation.
Spanish banking giant Banco Santander, for example, is offering AI training to all staff from 2026, while the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced the launch of a âsupercharged sandboxâ â a secure, supervised testing environment in which approved financial services firms will be able to explore new AI applications using Nvidia’s high-performance accelerated computing products. That initiative starts this month.
Half of large companies have already cut junior roles, compared to 30% of SMEs, with similar proportions expecting further cuts in the coming years â all thanks to the introduction of AI.
This result is in apparent contrast with recent figures from the US Census Bureau, which indicated that large companies are pulling back on their investment in AI after lacklustre results.
âOur research makes clear that the tension between making the most of AI and enabling a flourishing workforce is the defining challenge of our time,â said Susan Taylor, CEO of BSI.
However, the business leaders surveyed also admitted that the advent of AI will mean an inevitable deskilling of essential skills required to make it to the top. Forty-nine per cent said that they would not have developed their own skills had AI been widely available when they had started their careers. More than half reported âfeeling luckyâ for having started their career well before the advent of AI.
The drive to implement AI, though, may have deleterious side effects, with AI essentially an advanced form of pattern matching, but with too many patterns likely to lead to less accurate results. Indeed, an AI tool trialled by the Home Office to assist with asylum decisions reportedly produced âserious errorsâ, although the calibre of both IT and IT leader in the Civil Service may be partly to blame.
