TechCrunch Mobility: The AI skills arms race is coming for automotive | TechCrunch

"General Motors, for instance, laid off more than 10% of its IT department, or about 600 salaried employees - in a deliberate skills swap. This won't translate into a one-to-one exchange, which means there will likely be a net-negative job loss. But GM insists it is hiring and those layoffs have made room for it to recruit IT people with AI-focused backgrounds."

"The most sought-after capabilities are AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows. In practical terms, GM is looking for people who know how to build with AI from the ground up - designing the systems, training the models, and engineering the pipelines - not just use AI as a productivity tool."

"Those AI job losses are mounting in the automotive sector. CNBC calculated that Ford, GM, and Stellantis have cut a combined total of more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs, or 19% of their combined workforces, from recent employment peaks this decade. While there are a variety of reasons for these cuts, they are generally connected to technological changes, including AI."

"Companies are leaning heavily into AI, although anecdotes from some engineers and founders suggests not all of these businesses know quite what they're doing with it yet. Samsara is one company that seems to have figured out a revenue-generating use case. The company has spent the last decade giving its customers cameras to mount inside millions of trucks for driver monitoring, theft prevention, and helping with liability claims."

AI is reshaping transportation and other industries by creating roles for some workers while reducing others. General Motors laid off more than 10% of its IT department, about 600 salaried employees, as part of a skills swap, while hiring for AI-focused backgrounds. The most sought-after capabilities include AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows. The automotive sector has seen mounting AI-linked job cuts, with Ford, GM, and Stellantis reducing more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs, about 19% of combined workforce peaks. Some companies are adopting AI without fully understanding how to use it effectively. Samsara has used long-term camera data to train models that detect potholes and other road conditions.

Read at TechCrunch