81% of People Say They Know How to Use AI—Only 12% Are Right

With the increasing use of AI technology in our modern society, it is becoming increasingly important to know how to properly provide AI with the most effective prompts to maximize your benefits from the technology. You wouldn’t start a dialogue with Leonardo DaVinci over Corn Flakes if he was alive today. The conversation will lead you nowhere. The same applies to AI prompt engineering; what you say, and how you say it, matters.

AI Prompt Engineering: By the Numbers

About 81% of IT professionals think they can craft the right prompts to guide a generative AI model to create the desired output, but only 12% actually have the skills to perform prompt engineering effectively. There is a growing need for AI prompt engineering as more AI models are being used around the world. In fact, as many as two in three leaders will not hire someone who does not have up-to-date AI skills. Unfortunately, as many as 70% of global workers need to upgrade their skills using AI, especially with 60% of IT decision makers saying that AI constitutes the biggest skill gap with candidates.

Many professionals might know the basics of AI but lack the in-depth knowledge required to advance in their careers. Most desk workers do not know how to adequately use generative AI at work while getting the most value from using generative AI. Workers also struggle to leverage trusted data sources while keeping their first-party data secure. With a 50% hiring gap between AI jobs and AI job roles, learning exactly how to use AI prompt engineering appropriately and understanding what makes it so important is more essential than ever.

The Rise of AI Literacy

AI literacy teaches users how AI works while AI prompt engineering teaches users how to think about AI. AI prompt engineering is the art and science of structuring an instruction that a generative AI can interpret and create high-quality outputs as a result. There are various ways to structure a prompt for an AI to follow, including a chain-of-thought approach, chain-of-symbol approach, generated knowledge prompting, least to most prompting, and non-text prompting. With images and video, there are even more prompt options such as negative prompts, textual inversion, and prompt injection.

72% of IT leaders currently believe that AI skill gaps must be immediately addressed since it is clear that learning new AI skills will be vital to the AI revolution we are experiencing. Thankfully, there are programs that offer online, skill-based certificates that are useful in practical, in-demand professions. These programs are dedicated to reskilling, upskilling, and cross-skilling workers through targeted AI prompt engineering courses. Students can earn a certificate in as little as six to eight weeks!

Bringing it All Together

There is no doubt that AI technology is continuously being adopted across different industries as well as everyday life, making it necessary for us to learn how to approach it in an effective manner. Taking courses and receiving certificates can give workers a strong edge compared to the competition, making them more desirable to companies who are leaning into optimizing AI technology to improve their business.