According to the World Economic Forums recent Future of Jobs Report, 39% of workers existing skillsets will become outdated by 2030 due to economic uncertainty, the rise of generative AI (genAI) and rapid technological change.Skillsets related to genAI, networks and cybersecurity,and technological literacy are now among the fastest growing and highest in-demand skills sought by employers.Seventy-three percent of employers prioritize hiring AI-skilled talent, yet three-quarters of them struggle to find the right candidates, according to one study commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It found that employers are willing to pay more for IT workers with genAI skills on average, 47% more and pay benefits extend across departments. Employers said that they would be willing to pay workers with AI skills a premium in sales and marketing (43% higher salary); finance (42% more); business operations (41% more); legal, regulatory, and compliance (37% more); and human resources (35% more).AWS has more than 600 online courses many of them free through which workers can become more familiar and certified in the uses of genAI technology and tools. And, not surprisingly, Amazon is dealing with many of the same issues, including worker fear of the unknown and concerns about what jobs will remain in the wake of genAIs advances.The pace at which new courses are being devoured by technologists and business-side workers alike is unpreceded, according to Jenny Troutman, director of product and services for AWS training and certification. Among all AWS Certifications, the beta exam for AWS Certified AI Practitioner drew the largest number of participants 20 times the number of participants than the historical average for new beta courses. For the AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer Associate, the company saw a tripling of the number of beta participants compared to the past average.While AWS has been expanding its courses to help workers gain expertise and certification in genAI, its also been forced to address internal concerns and anxiety around the technologys impact on jobs.Troutman said that as the technology and business marketplace quickly evolves, the traits that make a worker valuable are also changing. The need to understand how to use genAI, as well as the need for critical soft skills, is no longer a nice-to-have. Its a need-to-have.Troutman spoke with Computerworld about what skills are most needed by job seekers and the currently employed who want to keep their jobs or advance their careers.What do you see changing in terms of the type of skills and workers AWS itself is seeking? Were looking at the same things our customers are talking about, which is, how do we get our workforce upskilled on just what AI is to begin with, and then how to use it in their day-to-day jobs.We have our own internal efforts that are similar to the training we provide customers. Weve been running multiple internal campaigns on getting people to take the training, build the skills and get, at least depending on their role the certified AI practitioner certification, which is one we launched last year. Its meant for everyone to demonstrate fluency in AI and some basic understanding of AI and generative AI concepts, how you can benefit from them, and knowledge on the tools we provided.We are driving change management-type efforts to get people comfortable using the tools that are provided, so anything from AWS Q Developer to get our developers productivity improved and free up time for two things: One, get more out there so we can build faster for customers, but also to get people [doing] higher quality code moving faster and just more productive in their day-to-day work.We also have [business intelligence-type] tools internally where people are learning how to use AI. Another one is Amazon Q for Business our business intelligence tool that looks across internal information, and you can use it to make yourself more productive.So, we have been working on helping people understand what tools are out there, how they can use them, and then how they can think differently about what they can accomplish in their work over a period of time. And we incorporate that into our annual planning.What are you seeing in terms of accepting this kind of job change from employees? Are you getting any pushback? Yeah. Frankly, we see all the same things as we see externally. We see people who are super excited and jump on it and are figuring out new ways of using the technology rapidly and then you see people who are skeptical, who are going to say, Hey, its not ready for me to use, yet. Its not really going to affect me and [will] take longer to come along.What were finding is people that are in that place are starting to get nervous and realizing that people are serious [about this]. I think were probably further ahead than a lot of users, because we build the technology ourselves, and so we need to be demonstrating that were using it. So people are already realizing, If Im not figuring out how to use it, Im going to be in trouble, and its going to be a risk for my career.So, while there are still people who are slow to adopt it, I would say theres less of them and were moving past the message of, Its not ready for me, or its not relevant for me. Its more of an, Oh, how Im getting nervous, and I need to start figuring out how to do it, but Im so busy that it feels like a lot to have to learn it.What are the skills requirements that are changing? A big one is prompt engineering. Its a term that puts people off if theyre not technical. I think because you think of engineering as being technical, but really, its sort of the term that were using for how you get the output you need from a generative AI tool. It doesnt really matter your role. You need to understand how to write good prompts really be able to get the best benefit from the technology.Learning how to write good prompts is a skill in and of itself, and its a new skill that most people dont have. So that is one where we focus a lot. Once you get the basics and understand what AI and generative AI is, then you need to learn prompt engineering, and theres a course on how to write good prompts. Then the second thing to learn is just thinking differently. Its really around the soft skills of being creative, trying new things, thinking critically.So, if you try something out and it doesnt give you the result you wanted at first, being able to figure out why, and keep adapting your approach. And during that time, be collaborating with others to understand how other people are using the technology, which will help you think differently and come up with new ideas.Were in such early stages. While the technology itself been around a long time, widespread use hasnt been here for very long. Its really about the art of the possible and thinking differently about how to accomplish day-to-day things. I would say that is the biggest barrier, right now.And so, getting exposure to what other people are doing and being curious, reaching out and finding out is a skill in and of itself. We call it, learn and be curious. Its a leadership principle of ours at Amazon. But in general, its that curiosity of really being able to find out what other people are doing and then use that, not only to replicate it, but also to come up with new ideas yourself.What skills do you see are becoming outdated? Its things that arerepetitive. An example is an entry-level software developer, where theyre mostly coding all the time. That pure practice of coding is going to become less and less relevant. Its going to be developers who are able to spend more time on thinking differently about what theyre building, about how to create better applications, about better designs and architectures, which is a higher-level skill. And, theyre going to have to take on a role more around the quality of code the quality checking role making sure that the code is doing what you want.And so its those kind of more mid-tier and senior developers that are going to be where the demand is, and entry-level kind of coding is going to be a less relevant skill. So, were really encouraging people that are more junior developers to get mentors and learn how to think bigger and move beyond pure coding to getting into design and new application development.Is generative AI really creating quality code? Yes. If you use it correctly and its dependent on the use case. So, there are use cases that it is phenomenal at it, and there are use cases where theres still some work for it to get there. But it will get there. Its getting better by the day.The advances that are happening in the technology are happening so fast that things like Java migrations that are more standardized those [use cases] are incredible. The speed of acceleration and the quality of the work are tremendous. When youre talking about building something completely new from the beginning, then it takes someone who really understands how to do successful prompting, and they have more QA. But its getting there. Its getting better and better.How do you see software developer jobs changing? Are some entry-level jobs simply going away? I dont think so. I think we will need fewer people at those levels, or those at those levels will just become more advanced. Because what will happen is they wont need to spend as much time on coding. It will force them to learn new things so to either quickly adapt and focus time more on the actual problems that theyre solving with their applications, or learn new skills and start to expand beyond core products, core software development like core coding. Theyll also be moving into specialty areas, like security areas, where we definitely need more people. And they are adjacent, so they can kind of branch into building skills in those areas.What new jobs are you seeing in the market that are being created by this shift? I see a lot of people being able to be more productive in their current jobs. I see a lot of expansion of roles, like machine learning engineers, big data specialists. Were needing more and more of those roles. Theyre not necessarily new roles, but theyre roles where people tend to be highly skilled. We dont have a lot of them, and now we need a lot more of them.Its not clear yet what brand new roles were going to have or need. I think we havent figured it out yet, but what we are finding is that people in their current roles are operating in different ways and able to do a lot more [through genAI]. Its great, because you can be more creative and more innovative and get a lot more done. But it also can be scary for people because of how much more is this all going to change, and how fast and how many people are we going to need to do the work?Are we just going to keep getting more productive, or is there a point where we dont need as many people? And I think thats a biginteresting question, because I think its similar to when the internet came up. People could get stuff done so fast, and it was like, Yikes! Were not going to need nearly [as many workers] now. But we certainly havent seen the workforce shrink. So I dont think we will now, either. But its hard to predict where were going to go.Businesses are now hiring tech talent across various departments, like finance, sales, marketing and even business-side workers are becoming IT savvy. Are you seeing a rise in the business technologist? And what does that mean? I dont know if Id call them business technologists, but yes, theres a rise in business people trying to understand AI and what it means for them, and weve actually seen that with the launch of our AWS Certified AI Practitioner [course]. The demand for it has outpaced any previous certification weve had by a factor of 9x from the beta launch of it. And its been because of demand from both business people and technical people who are really just trying to figure out what is it all about and how can they use it in their day-to-day lives and jobs.Thats what were seeing that recognition that these new technologies that are coming outand theyre kind of the future, and people have to figure out what this technology can do for them and their job, no matter what their job is.We participated in a studyaround wages associated with AI skills, and what we found was just an incredible uplift in wage premiums for people in any role that have AI skills, or those who can demonstrate AI skills, including like above 30% wage premiums, even for people in HR, marketing, finance, stuff like that. And so, because of those roles, having such a high premium placed on having AI skills, people are realizing across the board that they need an understanding of the technology and a literacy around AI to be successful, no matter their role.What are the AI-related skills companies are seeking right now, and will those also change in the future? Yes. So the big ones are around machine learning engineers. We also came out with an associate-level technical certification for machine learning engineers last year, because that one is a big high-growth area, as well as data specialists. So, people who know how to architect the data environments and who know how to structure the data all the way through to people who know how to use it, like business analysts to effectively leverage [business intelligence] tools. And, then also software engineers who understand AI and who can build applications that leverage the AI underlying the application. Those are some of the highest growth technical roles. And who knows for how long?I imagine those are going to be critical roles for quite a for quite a while, but Im sure theres going to be all kinds of new ones that come up in the next couple years that we cant even imagine.What are the steps workers and job seekers can take to gain in-demandtech skills that can future-proof their careers? I would say two things: One, I would start setting aside a time to do some kind of structured learning online. We offer that on AWS Skill Builder. Start taking some of the foundational courses. Theres all kinds of free training out there: What is AI? What is generative AI? Theres even a generative AI essentials course on there where you can just get the foundational concepts. I would start learning that now.And two, I would find what tools you either have access to at your company that are generative AI or go outside and start with Q Developer or other Q [courses], depending on your role, or even Q for Business, and start using the tools out there. Just play with them, understand what they can do. Theres a great course around understanding the art of the possible for generative AI out on AWS Skill Builder.It starts to give you a sense of how to think differently what are people doing with it? Then just start playing with it and see what you can do. That curiosity, I think, is going to be the most critical skill or trait to keeping up with whats going on out there with AI. Its about having the curiosity to go out and play around and learn and just start using it in, even in personal stuff. You know, use it to craft a strongly worded email when youre frustrated with something that happened with your kids at school or to write your Christmas letter, or whatever it is that you even do in your personal life that takes time play around with it. See what it can do, and youll start to realize, both in your personal and professional life, how much there is that you can do with it.