AI ‘could make up for a shortage of workers in finance’
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE could tackle a shortage of workers in Guernsey by taking on the ‘grunt work’ of many jobs.
With hundreds of vacancies said to be available in the finance sector, the CEO of Channel Islands IT company Sigma Robert Sillars also said that AI could free up people to move to productive jobs, with benefits flowing to Guernsey as well.
His comments came as a senior representative from global technology giant Fujitsu recently visited Guernsey to meet leaders from various business sectors to discuss how the company’s ‘deep learning’ platform and other services could support their companies.
Mark McAlpine, a business development director at Fujitsu, said: ‘AI is all about making people more efficient. Where you have got a gap in employment or where you have got full employment and lots of available jobs, AI can fill that gap and make the existing workforce more efficient.’
He added that his company was working with an insurance company in London on a proof of concept project around their modelling data.
‘What they want to do is automate the run of the mill stuff and move their people into jobs where they are focusing on the more bespoke things to make more money. They reckon they can increase their profit 10, 15, 20%,’ said Mr McAlpine.
Mr Sillars said Sigma and Fujitsu had been partners for 20 years and highlighted Fujitsu’s experience of digitalisation as being something that could support Guernsey – with technology potentially unlocking greater productivity.
‘It takes the grunt work out of doing the analysis and lets AI do that,’ said the Sigma CEO. ‘Therefore these people, who are quite bright, can go off and do a more productive job by bringing more business to that business or to the island. Because of the uniqueness of where we are and we are limited with the number we have on-island, this actually creates more wealth.’
