Aug 01, 2022
By Marie Oldfield (CStat, CSci, FIScT)
As of 2020 there is still no subject benchmark statement for Artificial Intelligence or modelling. What does this mean?
All subjects have a benchmark statement. This tells the educational institution what needs to be taught and when and describes the building blocks for progression in the subject. This statement also describes assessments that need to take place in order to assure the workplace that the candidate is indeed qualified in the area of the statement. These statements are quite prescriptive, but it seems not updated, very often. New statements seem to be quite behind in being created.
The education industry has not caught up to the fact that data science and artificial intelligence are growing areas. This is problematic as they have been tagged on as subjects to existing degrees.
This causes issues in the area of ethic and modelling where processes that may not even have been taught in the previous statements on statistics or mathematics are now critical to subjects such as data science and artificial intelligence. The education on these topics is no longer purely academic is has an inherent outward focus on users and operators of this technology, Therefore the teaching cannot remain as academic only, it must be contextual with regards to society and implementation. This then demands modelling methodology and ethics be included as a minimum. As of 2021 this has still not been achieved and with many legal cases and much wasted capital in the last few years due to faulty systems implementations it is crucial that that gap is plugged. We owe it to our new workforce to provide them with the skills with which to flourish.
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