AI plus upskilling could help solve labor shortages, leaders say

DAVOS, Switzerland – More companies are looking to AI to help curb labor shortages in multiple industries, leaders said in Davos.

Why it matters: The manufacturing industry, for example, is "suffering from a shortage of labor," said Siemens AG managing board member, chief technology officer, and chief strategy officer Peter Koerte.

• AI can bring "good employment, good productivity, good growth," he said.
• One example for increasing productivity is shortening the time it takes to troubleshoot issues, Koerte added.

Axios' Courtenay Brown and Alison Snyder moderated conversations with Koerte and Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm in Davos. The Jan. 20 conversations were sponsored by Gecko Robotics.

Yes, but: Implementing AI within a workforce also means current employees need upskilling, Stausholm said.

• "You want to create an environment where you unlock the full curiosity of people. You don't want people to just act like robots. … You can actually unlock a lot of creativity in an organization," Stausholm said.
• But, "everything that can be automated should be automated," he said.

Driving the news: Stausholm, a Danish citizen, also addressed a question over Greenland's highly coveted minerals and whether Rio Tinto was interested, saying, "be my guest for some of my competitors who want to go to Greenland."

• Stausholm pointed out that mining in Greenland often isn't economically efficient because of the lack of infrastructure between cities. "Everything has to be airborne. The logistic cost up there is enormous."

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In a View From the Top sponsored segment, Gecko Robotics co-founder and CEO Jake Loosararian highlighted the benefit of using AI in the industrial and manufacturing industries, but also stressed the need for more data to improve these technologies.

• "A lot of the infrastructure with artificial intelligence just simply does not exist. And so one thing that's super important for all of us to understand is that artificial intelligence is worthless, and actually worse can drive horrible results that can impact both safety and an environment if you aren't feeding it good data," Loosararian said.