Smith Business magazine-summer24-paperturn - Flipbook - Page 29
terms has increased eightfold in the
past decade. But employers want more
than AI skills.
“As we’re hiring students, we are
looking for a baseline AI 昀氀uency
and understanding,” says Deloitte’s
Urbanczyk. “They also need agility and
a willingness to continuously learn,
constantly be curious—that’s really
important for students who want to
be successful in the business world.”
BETTING ON AI
Smith grads will have an enormous
opportunity to shape the future of
work with AI, starting now.
“One of the big opportunities is
thinking of how work itself—every
single person, every single task within
a business—can be transformed using
smart humans with an AI friend,”
Padmanabhan says.
Urbanczyk agrees. “We like to say
humans with machines are the future.
Businesses that will succeed are going
to put in the processes and have the
talent to leverage AI to make their
organizations more impactful.”
He says it’s a major disruptor, but
AI won’t replace humans.
In fact, the AI revolution will likely
create even more jobs for humans, says
Konana. “More innovations will come
that exploit AI—and that will create
AI Tool Uses Eyes Movements
to Predict Decisions
Marketing professor Michel Wedel and two
colleagues used eye-tracking technology to create
a new deep-learning algorithm that can predict
people’s decisions before they make them by
tracking just a few seconds of their eye movements.
“With that knowledge, marketers could reinforce that
choice or try to push another product instead,” says
Wedel. Front-facing cameras on smartphones and
other devices make it possible to track people’s eye
movements, though companies need to ask users’
permission to do so. “The processing of the eye
movement data typically has been very laborious.
With this algorithm, we sidestep a lot of that.”
more jobs. They may just be different
jobs. I believe technology is going to
evolve. We’re going to come up with
new business models and exciting
new products and services.”
More innovations will
come that exploit AI—and
that will create more jobs.
They may just be different
jobs. We’re going to come
up with new business
models and exciting new
products and services.
—Dean Prabhudev Konana
Robots Won’t Replace
Accounting Jobs
Accounting professor Rebecca Hann’s research
shows that AI isn’t replacing the accounting
profession; it’s just changing the industry’s job
descriptions as firms’ needs shift. Hann and her
co-authors looked at a decade’s worth of jobposting data to gauge the skills accounting firms
require in auditors. They looked at what auditor
skills can be replaced by technology—repetitive
tasks, like number crunching—and how that
changes the skills employers demand from the
people they hire. They observed a clear trend.
“We see a significant increase over time in the
demand for cognitive and social skills.”