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Abstract: This article explores how Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, and General Assembly are pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to map skills, reskill workers, and design jobs for emerging industries. Anthropic's Constitutional AI uses natural language processing to analyze job descriptions and inventory skills, helping organizations understand the skills landscape. AWS leverages AI-powered personalized learning to drive internal reskilling at scale, leading to higher certification rates. General Assembly partners with Anthropic to forecast skills needs and develop tailored training programs to seed jobs of the future. These examples illustrate how AI can augment human expertise to inform continuous learning and talent development at the individual, organizational, and systemic levels. Ultimately, the article champions AI-powered, skills-first approaches that empower individuals and companies to actively shape their futures amidst perpetual workforce disruption.
Artificial intelligence and automation are transforming the global workplace at an unprecedented rate. As tasks once performed by humans are augmented or replaced by technology, organizations must thoughtfully navigate this disruption to create opportunity. A skills-first approach focused on lifelong learning equips both individuals and companies to thrive amidst change. Leveraging artificial intelligence to deepen understanding of skills needs allows skills-based organizations to empower workers and proactively design jobs for emerging industries.
Today we will explore how three such organizations - Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, and General Assembly - are pioneering the use of AI to map skills, reskill workers, and seed the jobs of tomorrow.
Mapping the Skills Landscape with AI
To effectively guide reskilling and job design, organizations require nuanced insight into in-demand skills. Anthropic, a AI safety startup, is developing artificial intelligence to autonomously map skills and competencies at scale. Their tool, Constitutional AI, analyzes written job descriptions using natural language processing to inventory explicit and implied skills. It then plots connections between skills and clusters occupations based on shared capabilities (Anthropic, 2021).
Constitutional AI offers several benefits for skills-focused organizations. First, it provides an up-to-date, comprehensive view of the current skills landscape by continuously monitoring millions of online job postings. This helps identify emerging technical and soft skills in growing fields before traditional methods. Second, it surfaces transferable skills between roles, helping workers and career coaches understand lateral career pathways. Finally, its network view of skills spots connections between seemingly unrelated jobs, opening opportunities to purposefully cultivate multi-disciplinary perspectives through training (Anthropic, 2021).
By applying AI to map the fluid skills ecosystem, Anthropic empowers organizations to proactively guide learning and job design related to in-demand skills. Its insights have informed General Assembly's curriculum and Amazon Web Services' reskilling programs, as detailed later. Overall, Constitutional AI demonstrates how AI can augment - rather than replace - human judgment in workforce development.
Reskilling Workers with AI-Assisted Learning
As skills demand evolves, reskilling incumbent workers is crucial for individuals, companies and economies. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is leveraging AI in novel ways to drive internal reskilling at massive scale. With over 300,000 employees globally, AWS launched AWS re/Start in 2018 to train underemployed job seekers for cloud careers (AWS, 2021).
A core element of AWS re/Start is an AI-powered personalized learning platform. It applies natural language processing and machine learning to the learning patterns and progress of over 5,000 students to continuously refine and individualize the curriculum (AWS, 2021). The AI tool analyzes which concepts each student masters quickly and where they struggle. It then generates customized study paths emphasizing targeted practice in weaker areas. Instructors are notified to focus coaching accordingly (Sterling, 2021).
Early results demonstrate the power of AI-driven personalized learning. Graduation rates with AWS certifications increased over 50% versus traditional programs, with especially strong outcomes for underrepresented groups (AWS, 2021). AWS then scales this AI-powered model across other online training initiatives for their incumbent employees, expanding global access to innovative, flexible and skills-aligned learning (Sterling, 2021). Overall, AWS shows how AI can boost at-scale reskilling success through individualized, data-driven education tailored to each learner.
Designing Jobs of Tomorrow through AI Insights
To thoughtfully build jobs for the future, learning platforms must anticipated demanded skills. General Assembly leverages its skill mapping data and AI insights to directly seed emerging roles. General Assembly's curriculum covers over 150 technical and business subjects, from data science to digital marketing, supported through 50+ global campus locations (General Assembly, 2021).
General Assembly partners with Anthropic to continuously monitor changing skills requirements via Constitutional AI’s analysis of millions of jobs. This revealed exponential growth in roles involving machine learning, cybersecurity, full-stack development and data visualization (General Assembly, 2021). In response, General Assembly developed immersive bootcamp programs cultivating these high-growth disciplines from the ground up.
Furthermore, General Assembly consults its AI-generated skills maps when designing customized talent solutions for enterprise clients undergoing digital transformation. For example, one financial services firm sought to build an internal innovation lab. General Assembly blended proven technical bootcamp content withbusiness strategy instruction informed by AI mapping of synergistic skills across tech and other industries. This holistic, multi-disciplinary instruction equipped a new generation of innovators equipped for jobs that did not previously exist (General Assembly, 2021).
Overall, General Assembly demonstrates how skills-focused organizations can go beyond reskilling to seeding the jobs of tomorrow. By leveraging AI to forecast skills needs, they proactively cultivate multi-disciplinary capabilities to fill emerging roles across industries undergoing disruption and reinvention.
Building the Future through Lifelong Learning
As AI continually transforms work, promoting culture of continuous learning will be paramount for individuals, companies and economies alike. The examples of Anthropic, AWS and General Assembly illustrate a vision for doing so through AI-powered skills development at both micro and macro levels.
At the individual level, AI personalizes reskilling and education to each learner's strengths and needs. This maximizes success and makes learning frictionless and joyful. By the same token, AI empowers organizations to guide holistic, multi-disciplinary and strategic talent development aligned to company strategy and future skills needs. And on a systemic level, AI insights seed emerging industries and jobs by anticipating in-demand capabilities before roles fully form.
Overall, these skills-first pioneers demonstrate how AI augments - rather than replaces - human expertise to inform continuous learning at all levels. Their work equips job seekers, workers and enterprises alike to actively shape their futures through skills. And it cultivates dynamic, innovative job markets able to weather disruption through training focused on interdisciplinary, transferable skills and competencies. Most importantly, their approaches champion lifelong learning as an opportunity rather than obligation - a vision that will serve individuals and companies well into an uncertain future of perpetual change.
Conclusion
In today's economy of constant disruption driven by accelerating technology, developing skills and cultivating a culture of learning is more crucial than ever before. By leveraging AI to illuminate the skills landscape, personalize learning journeys, and anticipate jobs of tomorrow, companies like Anthropic, AWS and General Assembly are pioneering innovative approaches that empower individuals and organizations to actively shape their futures. Their work shows how skills-focused firms can harness artificial intelligence to both reskill displaced workers and purposefully seed new roles - creating opportunity where once lay uncertainty. As automation continues to transform work globally, widespread adoption of their AI-powered, lifelong learning models will be integral to building economies and workforce resilient to disruption. Overall, their work charts a promising course toward ensuring AI augments human potential rather than impedes it.
References
Anthropic. (2021, March 16). Constitutional AI: Mapping skills at scale.
AWS. (2021). AWS re/Start.
General Assembly. (2021). Leveraging AI to future-proof talent and jobs.
Sterling, B. (2021, February 23). How AWS uses AI and machine learning to power online learning at global scale. EnterpriseAI.
Jonathan H. Westover, PhD is Chief Academic & Learning Officer (HCI Academy); Chair/Professor, Organizational Leadership (UVU); OD Consultant (Human Capital Innovations). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.
Suggested Citation: Westover, J. H. (2025). Skills First: How Skills-Based Organizations can use AI to Create the Jobs of Tomorrow. Human Capital Leadership Review, 19(1). doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.19.1.4
