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Combating hallucinations. Organizations need people who can use AI tools, and there’s one skill that’s especially critical: prompt engineering, an MIT professor shares. Prompt engineering is essential because the output of generative AI (gen AI) platforms can vary widely depending on how the user hones and inputs the text commands. By putting in appropriate constraints, competent engineers can prevent the platform from making up information, also known as “hallucinating.” Some companies are offering six-figure salaries for full-time prompt engineers. [CNBC]
AI psychotherapists. It’s no secret that gen AI has gotten so good that some job fields are likely to shrink. But AI is creating new career opportunities for humans, too. As technology advances, “reskillers” will help companies identify what new skills they need and help workers acquire those skills. Meanwhile, “AI psychotherapists” will assess the quality of training data and test AI tools by asking probing questions. This will enable companies to explain why the AI platform made the recommendation to approve or reject a loan application, for example. [WSJ]
Hiring new roles. Just as better ingredients can make for a tastier meal, better inputs into a gen AI model can make for better results. Prompt engineering is the practice of writing these inputs, or prompts. Skilled engineers design inputs to interact optimally with other inputs in a gen AI tool. A 2023 McKinsey Global Survey found that 7% of respondents whose organizations have adopted AI are already hiring prompt engineers, explain Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky, global leaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and coauthors.
The changing workforce. Prompt engineering will likely become a larger hiring category in the next few years, but organizations also expect to reskill their existing workforce in AI. According to our 2023 survey, nearly four in ten respondents reporting AI adoption expect more than 20% of their companies’ workforces to be reskilled. At the same time, fewer than one in ten say that the size of their workforces will decrease by more than 20%. Explore our McKinsey Explainer to learn more about prompt engineering and how gen AI is affecting hiring.
— Edited by Belinda Yu, editor, Atlanta
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