"With the UK facing significant AI skills shortages, new research suggests a sharper focus on boosting workforce diversity will be required to meet government AI training plans. A new study from BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT found the proportion of women working in tech has risen to 22%. While the marks a welcomed - albeit small - increase of 1%, the institute noted there's still a lot of work to be done."
"BCS said the report comes at a critical time for the UK tech sector, with enterprises ramping up AI adoption and the government pushing for a rapid roll-out of tools across the public sector. Skills shortages have been a long-running challenge for the tech sector, and AI is now exacerbating the issue. In a report earlier this year, IT leaders said finding talent with AI-related skills was one of their leading challenges."
Women comprise 22% of the tech workforce, a one-percentage-point increase, with 441,000 women in specialist IT roles but roughly half a million still absent for equal gender parity. AI adoption across enterprises and a government push to roll out tools in the public sector are intensifying existing tech skills shortages. Finding talent with AI-related skills remains a leading challenge for IT leaders. The government aims to retrain or upskill about 7.5 million workers in AI with support from big tech. Increasing diversity by recruiting more women, disabled people, and workers over 50 could 'supercharge' UK AI capacity. Recommendations include embedding digital literacy and computing across the curriculum and supporting girls to stay engaged beyond age 14.
Read at IT Pro
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]