Carney said Microsoft was working to address an industry shortage of skilled workers with 200,000 training opportunities in New Zealand, in addition to 100,000 previously announced.
“So 300,000 new AI skill sets in New Zealand, but really focused on how do we help people evolve skills for the work of tomorrow,” Carney said.
“We like looking at AI skills across the spectrum, and particularly for entry-level skills. Because what we need to be thinking about is, how do we transform the workforce we have.
“We know that there will be changes to how people work. So now we need to actually think about how do we give them the skills for those new jobs that we see evolving, as they evolve.”
She said older people were in a strong position to make the most of AI tools.
More experienced workers were able to figure out faster how to make the most of AI than others who were born in the digital age and had little or no experience with analogue processes.
Carney said older people appeared to have little trouble adapting to AI.
She said younger people were experimenting with AI, while older workers were using it to best advantage.
“It turns out the older generation is actually really good at AI because they know what their job involves. They know where the value sits, and it’s really easy for them to offload things to AI – the admin, the pieces that they never loved doing but had to do, and they can find value in a fundamentally different way.”
A recent Seek report also pointed to an increased demand for AI specialists.
“The demand for AI-related skills in job ads has more than quadrupled over the last decade,” the Seek AI Gauge report said.
The types of skills related to AI jobs included machine learning and large language models, with the prevalence of terms related to Agentic AI and AI governance.
The Seek report also said marketing and communications roles featuring AI terms had grown sharply in recent years.
“Despite this increase, the total number of ads asking for AI-related skills remains relatively small,” Seek said.
