Themed “Humanising Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the Future Workforce”, the conference hosted more than 300 industry-leading exhibitors and 36 distinguished speakers who explored at length both the opportunities and challenges AI is expected to bring to the labour market in the near future.
In his opening remarks, human resources minister Steven Sim said approximately 16% of 97 roles in the nation’s financial sector are likely to be merged or eliminated altogether as a result of new technologies being introduced.
“In the information, communications and technology (ICT) sector, we are looking at 8% of current roles that will be highly impacted, which include security operation analyst, data analyst and application support engineer,” he said.
Sim said TalentCorp has also identified the aerospace, electronics, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, agriculture, construction and energy sectors as likely to be significantly impacted by AI, digitalisation and the green economy over the next three to five years.
He said it was important to minimise any adverse impact on jobs in these sectors which account for approximately 80% of the nation’s gross domestic product.
No need to fear AI
Experts who spoke at the event acknowledged that the AI revolution was bound to redefine many existing job roles, but expressed confidence in the local workforce’s resilience and adaptability.
Smarter HQ CEO Julie Holmes said there was no need to fear that AI would replace jobs entirely. She said it was more likely to elevate the nature of work by freeing employees from mundane tasks.
Echoing Holmes’s sentiment, author Justin Cohen said technology is only likely to replace employees who refuse to upskill themselves.
Meanwhile, former MSNBC presenter Mehdi Hasan urged Malaysia to enact a framework to regulate generative AI to prevent its abuse by developing a blueprint similar to the AI Bill of Rights in the US.
ROI Institute chairman Jack J Phillips said the framework should be tailored to incorporate local values rather than simply mirroring international approaches.
Participants’ reactions
On Instagram, attendee Ahmad Fauzan Othman expressed his delight at meeting Philips personally and being able to have a one-on-one discussion with him on how best to measure the return on investments for training programmes conducted.
Another attendee, Mayuri Ghosh, said she was “highly impressed” by innovation strategist Shawn Kanungo’s plenary address, in which he spoke about how human resource practitioners could adapt to the introduction of generative AI in the workplace.
In another social media post, Azharul Fitri Abdul Nifa described the conference as “very engaging and informative”, adding that he was fascinated by the hundreds of exhibition booths offering the latest trends in skills enhancement.
Using HRD Corp levies wisely
In his closing speech, Shahul Hameed Shaik Dawood, CEO of Human Resource Development Corporation (HRD Corp), which organised the event, said the skills development company was committed to growing its levy collection.
He said the levies will be used to hold more innovative programmes to advance Malaysia’s human capital development.
Shahul also said that HRD Corp has utilised 82% of levies collected from employers this year, including to fund the National Training Week which saw 55,000 free training courses offered to over 300,000 workers nationwide.
“We want to make sure that our levies are spent wisely and effectively. We need to make sure that they have been spent on developing human capital, knowledge sharing and learning from the best practices,” he said.