The real AI shortage: people with practical AI competence

Erlend Rosseland Stokke points out in digi.no to an AI skills gap that may soon prove far more demanding than many realise today.

The shortage is not technology.
It is not tools and models.
👉 But the shortage is people and environments that have made AI work in production. With real users, business-near data and clear consequences.

Stokke also describes a self-reinforcing cycle. ⭕

Organisations remain stuck in pilot mode because they lack people with real experience. At the same time, concrete experience is built only when someone gets the opportunity to take AI from pilot to production. Then the skills gap grows.

That is also part of the reason we established AI Value Lab Oslo.
We want to explore AI in practice, not only in principle.

Marius, Tatiana and Ole develop together by combining business understanding, technology, customer journeys, practical development and responsible implementation.
Through concrete cases, prototypes and discussions we challenge and explore how AI can be connected to workflows, decision support, user experience, governance and real value creation.

Those who wait learn more slowly. They deliver less, have fewer mistakes to learn from, fewer clarifications around data and risk, and less understanding of what their own organisation requires.
Meanwhile, those who act build a learning curve that becomes harder for others to catch up with. 📈

They learn through use.
They adjust along the way.
They develop their own frameworks.
They build internal confidence.
They see faster where value emerges.

What is interesting is not necessarily that the competence does not exist, but that it must be worked on actively. Both at individual and organisational level.

The most important learning does not come only from the classroom or sporadic, theoretical courses. Competence is not built primarily through posts and discussions. And not primarily by testing a new tool either.

When you stand in the trade-offs between need, user, data, risk, accountability, business and execution — that is when a different form of AI competence and experience develops. The kind that really matters. 💯

And that is why we agree the skills gap is about more than general AI interest. It is about who actively builds experience and practical maturity so AI can create real value tomorrow.

💥 For organisations that want to succeed, it is not enough to watch from the sidelines.

We are happy to grab a coffee with others working on this, or curious about how such experience can be built in practice. ☕

#GenerativeAI #AICompetence #DigitalTransformation #TechnologyLeadership #PracticalAI