On Techies Day, October 3, see how artificial intelligence helps the nerd brigade step out of their geekdom to explain the magic of coding to non-techies
Today is National Techies Day – founded way back in 1999 by CNET and Techies.com to encourage youth to build their career in the technology industry. That initiative has most probably been the fuel that has seen the rapid progress in the computer engineering sector. Today, AI, blockchain, cyber security, IoT, 5G, robot are on layman’s lips and these technologies are penetrating our lives, both professional and personal, through social media, OTT platforms, marketing tech, recruiting tech, and more.
Technology has been at the center of our every living moment, making sure we are more productive at work and super-entertained at home. It helps us keep in touch with friends and family, no matter how far they are. At some point in the past, we may have thought of all this as “techie stuff” too tough to understand. Not anymore. Artificial intelligence has primarily helped computer engineers make this technology-building concept easy to understand. While there’s a lot that goes into conceptualizing, designing, building, managing and making operational technology for the enterprise, today AI is helping engineers boost the level of its understanding for non-techies as well. More and more non-technical students are bridging the gap of their tech know-how thanks to AI, which helps data scientists, engineers, analysts – all techies – explain technology better.
While the impact of artificial intelligence over the years cannot be quantified, it’s most effective contribution has been to bring technology out of the geek domain and democratizing it or simplifying it for those who don’t have in-depth tech knowledge. Now that everyone is chatting with bots on apps, groceries being shopped and bill payments being automated, it’s important to take a moment and thank all the “techies” or technology professionals for their contribution. But more so, we need to thank them for working tirelessly to making technology available to all — not just for its use but also for the opportunity they have brought through AI to let everyone understand and learn technology as well. Primarily, it has been the most important equalizer of sorts for this connected world.
And, for this, we have to thank artificial intelligence or AI tech the most. With the data deluge at unprecedented levels, there was no choice but to bring computing out of the techie ambit. And, here’s where AI comes to the rescue. With the capability of scaling computing processes exponentially while needing skills to the minimal for those fronting it, the need for engineers and programmers is considerably reduced.
Technology or coding today offers an intuitive user interface at a completely affordable cost and AI technology offers results that self-detect errors in coding and make it speedy. Consider this significant example related by Rachel Thomas of the Fast.ai University of San Francisco, whose AI courses for non-techies are well-known. Thomas explains how AI has brought hopefuls closer to their goals like a farmer who wanted to learn AI algorithms to track his farm animals’ health and produce.
Techies have tirelessly worked to keep the organizations across US online and enterprise employees working from home in the COVID pandemic. From monitoring health activities to online schooling to work collaborations across the globe – techies have kept the economies afloat.
While the skills shortage is continuing, techies have now brought AI to their rescue to groom the non-technical professionals for tasks they can easily skill up for. With the demand for techies at an all-time high (nearly 3.5 million unfilled jobs only in the cyber security tech domain by 2021) training everyone to the extent possible in at least understanding tech applications will surely help meet this halfway. Be it healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, ecommerce there’s a huge scope to use AI to train everyone to apply themselves to computing to some extent with support from engineers and IT professionals.
AI has generated the curiosity in the non-techies mind, it has given results faster as there’s no delay in what’s being coded and how it translates to solutions, and since the UI is easy, it’s definitely the ideal way to reduce the skills gap.
Demand for professionals with computing skills is set to grow across industry sectors and enterprise function, be it technical or non-technical job roles. AI, data science, cyber security, blockchain will be ubiquitous not only in our careers but also in our personal lives, through social media, driverless cars, mobile apps and more.
AI technology is bringing new opportunities for productivity, growth and prosperity. Training non-techies with the skills needed for the jobs of the future is where the IT professionals or techies as the layman calls them can reduce their burden. In times to come, techies must see non-techies as their partners who will help them realize their futuristic tech vision of a more egalitarian, humane, progressive world!
Looking at this as advantages, techies can devote more of their energies to ensuring AI models that are ethical, explainable and responsible. At the end of the day, technology will continue to advance at a rapid pace, and techies will always remain the bridge to simplify and smooth the human-machine interaction always!
