AI Technicians: Developing Rapid Occupational Training Methods for a Competitive AI Workforce
This work addresses the challenge of workforce development for AI technicians in large organizations, particularly the U.S. Army, but it is incremental as it builds on existing training methods with a focus on rapid adaptation.
The paper tackles the need for rapid occupational training to develop a large workforce of AI technicians, such as maintainers and integrators, due to the accelerating pace of AI advancements and the limitations of traditional degree programs. It presents results from a four-year collaboration between the U.S. Army and Carnegie Mellon University, which has trained 59 AI technicians, emphasizing the necessity of frequent updates and stakeholder collaboration for effective training.
The accelerating pace of developments in Artificial Intelligence~(AI) and the increasing role that technology plays in society necessitates substantial changes in the structure of the workforce. Besides scientists and engineers, there is a need for a very large workforce of competent AI technicians (i.e., maintainers, integrators) and users~(i.e., operators). As traditional 4-year and 2-year degree-based education cannot fill this quickly opening gap, alternative training methods have to be developed. We present the results of the first four years of the AI Technicians program which is a unique collaboration between the U.S. Army's Artificial Intelligence Integration Center (AI2C) and Carnegie Mellon University to design, implement and evaluate novel rapid occupational training methods to create a competitive AI workforce at the technicians level. Through this multi-year effort we have already trained 59 AI Technicians. A key observation is that ongoing frequent updates to the training are necessary as the adoption of AI in the U.S. Army and within the society at large is evolving rapidly. A tight collaboration among the stakeholders from the army and the university is essential for successful development and maintenance of the training for the evolving role. Our findings can be leveraged by large organizations that face the challenge of developing a competent AI workforce as well as educators and researchers engaged in solving the challenge.