Gartner: Strongest demand for AI talent from outside IT

Gartner: Strongest demand for AI talent from outside IT

New York, 29.3.2020

A new report from Gartner argues that over the past four years, the strongest demand for talent with AI capabilities has come from other business units of the company rather than IT.

Data from Gartner’s Talent Neuron program shows that while IT’s demand for AI talent has tripled between 2015 and 2019, the number of AI positions advertised by IT is still less than half the number filled by other business units.

Peter Krensky, research director at Gartner, said: „High demand and tight labour markets have made candidates with AI skills very competitive, but recruitment techniques and strategies have not kept pace. In Gartner’s recent study on developing strategies for AI and machine learning, respondents identified „employee skills“ as the number one challenge or barrier to the adoption of AI and machine learning.

Sales, marketing, customer service, finance and R&D are the departments that recruit AI talent in large numbers. These business units also use AI talent for customer churn models, customer profitability analysis, customer segmentation, cross-sell and up-sell recommendations, demand planning and risk management.

A recent WhiteHat Security survey of industry experts found that more than half of the companies use AI or machine learning in their security stack. According to the survey, three-quarters of respondents use an application security tool, and over 40% of these application security solutions use both AI and human-based verification. An Oracle study of 700 respondents indicated that companies that use AI along with other new technologies in the financial and operational areas are likely to increase their annual profits by 80% faster.