Iredell Ready forum focuses on impact of AI, skills workers will need in future

Posted on by Mike Fuhrman
Iredell County Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Jenn Bosser welcomes attendees to the forum.

BY DONNA SWICEGOOD

Will artificial intelligence replace human employees?

The answer is no, but AI will mean a change for employers and workers, according to Bill Daggett, founder of the Successful Practices Network and International Center for Leadership in Education.

Daggett was one of the speakers during the Annual Workforce Forum held by Iredell Ready, a collaborative involving education, industry and local government leaders working to ensure a skilled workforce. The forum was held on Friday at Mitchell Community College in Statesville.

Employers will be looking for skills that cannot be performed by AI, such as honesty, trust, teamwork and motivation, among others, Daggett said.

“Technology has a hard time doing these things,” he explained.

Students are showing increasing deficits in these areas, which are the exact ones employers will be looking for in the coming years.

“What skills do you need to be successful to look beyond school?” he asked. “To be successful in school takes a different set of skills than knowing what they need to be successful beyond school.”

Daggett said children today have never lived in a world where they cannot instantly access information via sites such as Google.

“Jobs … will be so fundamentally transformed in the next 12 to 24 months — 12 to 24 months because of advancing AI that they will be basically unrecognizable. Now, they will be restructured. It’s not that they won’t be there, but they have a huge retraining problem,” he said.

Daggett said credentialed educational programs will be important to employers in the coming years.

Jeff James, superintendent of Iredell-Statesville Schools, said the district is excited about the opportunity to help students acquire needed skills.

The forum also included information from Senemeht Olatunji and Gina Zhang of myFutureNC, an organization formed to ensure employers have a skilled workforce.

They discussed the 2025 State of Educational Attainment Report. Among the findings:

♦ In 2023, 64 percent of I-SS students and 60 percent of Mooresville Graded School District students went to post-secondary institutions within six years of finishing high school. The. state average is 59 percent.

♦ Statewide figures show that 42 percent of workers did not earn a living wage in 2023. A living wage is defined as one that can cover necessary expenses such as food, housing, medical care, transportation and childcare. That living wage is estimated to be $44,848.

Jenn Bosser, CEO and president of the Iredell County Economic Development Corporation, said the Iredell Ready collaborative is working to address these areas.