AI is shaking up IT work, careers, and businesses — and here’s how to prepare – November 2025

Author/Source: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNET See the full link here

Takeaway

The article discusses how artificial intelligence is profoundly changing the IT landscape, necessitating a shift in skills from routine tasks to more strategic roles like AI governance and prompt engineering. It emphasizes that individuals and businesses must proactively adapt by upskilling and embracing new competencies to remain relevant and thrive in this evolving environment.

Technical Subject Understandability

Intermediate

Analogy/Comparison

The shift from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles serves as a good comparison for the AI transformation in IT. Just as drivers needed to learn new skills to operate cars instead of handling horses, and mechanics had to understand engines, IT professionals must now acquire new AI-centric skills. This transformation isn’t about eliminating travel, but profoundly changing the means and management of it, creating new opportunities while making old ones obsolete.

Why It Matters

This matters because the widespread adoption of AI means that IT professionals who do not adapt risk becoming obsolete, while those who embrace new skills can unlock significant career growth and innovation opportunities. For example, a traditional software developer might transition from writing code for standard applications to prompt engineering, focusing on designing optimal interactions with AI models, thereby creating more impactful and strategic contributions to their organization.

Related Terms

AI transformation
IT workforce
Reskilling
Upskilling
Prompt engineering
Data science
AI governance
Ethical AI
Soft skills
Automation
Human-AI collaboration

Jargon Conversion:
AI transformation: The process of radically changing how businesses operate by integrating artificial intelligence into their systems and processes.
Reskilling: Training employees to learn entirely new skills for a different job or role, often due to technological changes.
Upskilling: Teaching employees additional skills to improve their performance in their current job or to take on more advanced responsibilities.
Prompt engineering: The specialized skill of designing and refining the instructions or “prompts” given to AI models (especially large language models) to get the desired output.
AI governance: The framework of rules, policies, and processes for the responsible and ethical development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems.
Human-AI collaboration: When people and artificial intelligence systems work together, each leveraging their unique strengths to achieve a common goal.

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