While the capabilities of AI models continue to climb rapidly, with month-by-month improvements, deep adoption of AI across organisations and the broader economy remains in its early stages - and the expected positive GDP impact has yet to fully materialise.

This presentation posits that the primary bottleneck is, perhaps paradoxically, a shortage of the skilled human workforce required to deploy AI effectively, particularly in the emerging role of the AI Engineer. The higher-education sector has struggled to respond at the necessary speed to the changes triggered by the “ChatGPT moment” in late 2022, and we will discuss the emergence of AI Engineering programs. The presentation will also discuss organisational strategy around AI Engineering and the benefits for professionals more broadly