Digitalisation – a threat or an opportunity?
Digitalisation refers to the societal change where information technology is becoming an increasingly essential part of our work and everyday life. This change appears in various ways. For example, you can see the real-time locations and schedules of public transport on your phone during your commute, or you can order food directly to your doorstep and pay for your purchase online.
Job Market Finland is part of the digitalisation of our society. Job Market Finland centralises public and private employment services, work-related services and competence development to a single online service in an effort to respond to the changes in the world of work. With the help of artificial intelligence, jobseekers are shown vacancies that match their skills and experience, and employers automatically get the job search profiles of potential employees in their list of recommendations.
Still, the change brought on by digitalisation is not all positive. Questions have been raised in recent times, especially about the reliability and safety of AI technology. The breakneck pace of AI development and the way it has become prevalent in many fields has shown that national and international legislation have both failed to adapt quickly enough to the threats related to artificial intelligence. We do not currently understand the societal impact of powerful AI systems well enough.
At the G7 Summit held this May, leaders of the G7 member states called for international regulation for the development of AI systems. Several technology company executives and academics have also expressed concerns about the unregulated development of artificial intelligence.
AI streamlines the job search in Job Market Finland
While powerful AI systems require regulation, artificial intelligence is not a synonym for threat. At Job Market Finland, artificial intelligence improves match-making between jobseekers’ job applicant profiles and the job advertisements that are suitable for them. Methods of Natural Language Processing (NLP) are used to analyse the text written by the jobseeker in their profile. These methods are often more efficient in finding a suitable vacancy than if the jobseeker manually browsed job advertisements. In this way, artificial intelligence streamlines the job search process.
In other words, digitalisation is not simply black or white – a threat or an opportunity. There are several shades of grey in between, and the scale is not static. A threat may suddenly turn into an opportunity and vice versa. Thus, it is important to promote public discourse and the open sharing of understanding related to digitalisation so that everyone can have the opportunity and know-how to use the growing range of online services safely.
Read more
- How the matching works
- Guest blogger: Using artificial intelligence to identify language proficiency requirements
- Guest blogger: Good artificial intelligence