Good morning.
A new survey by Access Partnership and Amazon Web Services has revealed that, on average, employers are willing to pay employees in their finance departments who have AI skills 42% more than peers without such expertise.
Compared with other departments, employers also said they're willing to pay an average of 47% more to IT workers with AI skills, 43% more to sales and marketing workers, 41% more to those in business operations, 37% more to those working in legal, regulatory, and compliance, and 35% more to employees in human resources.
Employers said AI could boost productivity by 47% if fully utilized, with employees putting that figure closer to 41%. This indicates that the wage premium is strongly correlated with gains in productivity, according to AWS and Access Partnership. The findings are based on a survey of 3,297 employees and 1,340 organizations in the U.S., across multiple industries.
“As customers increasingly adopt AI and machine learning (ML) technologies, the need for cloud expertise is on the rise,” Jenni Troutman, director of products and services at AWS Training and Certification, said in a statement. “Organizations and individuals who invest in skills training are better equipped to keep pace with innovation; generative AI is no different.” (AWS is now offering free AI skills training programs, Troutman added.)
For CFOs, there are big concerns about finding talent who can execute strategic technology objectives. Deloitte's Q3 2023 CFO Signals survey found that 63% of finance chiefs said the greatest barriers to adopting and deploying generative AI are talent resources and capabilities.
Generative AI is “going to separate winners from losers; and it’s going to truly turbocharge the winners faster than you and I have been expecting,” Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at MIT, said during Fortune's CFO Collaborative event earlier this month, held in collaboration with Workday and Deloitte.
Another key finding of the AWS and Access Partnership survey is that more than 93% of employers and 86% of employees expect to use generative AI within the next five years. The tech, according to the respondents, will be used to increase innovation and creativity, automate repetitive tasks, and boost learning.
Upskilling in AI will be on many to-do lists in 2024.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
