The expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) has hit a snag, namely a skilled worker shortage. There simply aren’t enough workers trained to build AI programs. To bridge the gap, Google is offering up $50 million to train some 300,000 skilled workers. It’s a move that follows a $115 million training program Meta started for skilled trade workers announced earlier this week and a $150 million national fellowship program from Anthropic that will place 1,000 skilled tradespeople in nonprofits. And the timing couldn’t be more appropriate. JLL Research says some 2.1 million skilled trades jobs – including electricians, HVAC professionals, plumbers, pipe fitters and the like – will go unfilled between now and 2030. Courtesy: Adobe Stock skilled trades and gen z When it comes to Generation Z, skilled trades jobs do not seem to be a popular career path. There are many factors pushing the generation away from these jobs, including some antiquated views about working in a manufacturing or hands-on labor environment. I chatted with Aaron Prather, the director of robotics and autonomous systems at ASTM International, about this very topic last year. Part of the problem, Prather said, is the way manufacturing is presented in classrooms as being dirty and archaic, a representation that is a far cry from the modern plant floor. “Some of them, sadly, are still looking at textbooks that show factories of earlier times and how they were just dark and dirty places, and that’s just not what modern manufacturing is,” he said in…
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