Tue, May 12, 2026 page8

• EDITORIAL: The growing AI skills gap

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  As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly widespread in workplaces, some people stand to benefit from the technology while others face lower wages and fewer job opportunities. However, from a longer-term perspective, as AI is applied more extensively to business operations, the personnel issue is not just about changes in job opportunities, but also about a structural mismatch between skills and demand.

  This is precisely the most pressing issue in the current labor market. Tai Wei-chun (戴偉峻), director-general of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Innovation at the Institute for Information Industry, said in a recent interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times), that amid widespread AI use, future workplaces are expected to face a situation where companies have vacancies but no one to fill them, or companies have workers but are unable to use them.

  The “2026 Talent White Paper” released by Commonwealth Magazine Group in November last year showed that up to 80 percent of companies are concerned that their employees’ skills would not keep pace with market changes over the next three years. Similarly, a high percentage of companies believe that “insufficient employee skills” is the biggest obstacle to corporate transformation, the report said. Furthermore, the problem of talent shortages is shifting from “not being able to recruit people” to “not being able to find the right people with key skills,” it found.

  As Tai said in the interview, concerns about AI-driven unemployment have extended from white-collar office jobs, such as administrative clerks and assistants, to blue-collar factory roles, such as semiconductor testing, warehousing and logistics. In particular, the use of robotic arms and autonomous driving systems has led to machines taking over many repetitive and high-precision tasks, while the adoption of digital twin technology can even accurately simulate remote physical environments, replacing some of the work of inspection and logistics personnel, he said.

  This transformation is even more pronounced in the medical sector, based on the results of cooperation between the Institute for Information Industry and some hospitals, Tai said. Simpler tasks include surgical instrument checks by AI to ensure no critical tools are missed in operating rooms and communications between doctors and nurses via voice input to reduce administrative burdens. Even the initial diagnosis of test reports can be completed with the assistance of AI, he added, as the technology acts as a useful tool for healthcare professionals and, in some cases, provides an educational context for patients.

  These scenes show a shift in skill requirements and imply a paradox following the rapid adoption of AI in today’s workplaces. On one hand, companies cannot find enough talent for new advanced positions while simultaneously needing fewer workers for routine manual tasks. It is not that companies do not need people; they do. However, they need a different type of talent that knows how to integrate AI, analyze problems and make decisions. AI could be viewed as a form of disruptive innovation that transforms jobs rather than eliminating them, with the workforce undergoing reallocation. The point is that the gap between the jobs people want and the skills companies need seems to widen.

  104 Job Bank said that there were about 67,000 job openings related to AI for fresh graduates in the first quarter of this year, a rapid increase in just a few months. If, as Tai observed, this skill mismatch continues to expand, it would be advantageous for those willing to align with AI demand but harmful to others failing to keep up with the trends. As demand for roles associated with AI is expected to increase in the workplace, people are required to stay abreast of the latest trends to remain competitive. There are also calls for companies to expand generative AI training for existing workers to increase productivity.

  There are mixed views on the impact of AI on employment structure. However, there is consensus that this structure has been constantly changing with the arrival of the AI era alongside a declining birthrate and an aging society. Although some employees have already used AI at work, the overall AI penetration rate among enterprises remains relatively low, and most companies currently use AI as supporting tools rather than fully reshaping their end-to-end processes. That means the impact of AI on the labor market has not yet been fully realized, and the technology’s long-term effects on productivity and economic growth remain to be seen, even as it could gradually become a core operating system for businesses.
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