Comparative analysis of professions in the field of artificial intelligence based on the competence approach
Authors:   Petrozavodsk State University, Gurtov Valery A. , Pitukhin Evgeny A. ,   Petrozavodsk State University, Shegoleva Lyudmila V. ,   Petrozavodsk State University
Published: March 2023

Introduction. Recently, the tasks of providing the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence (hereinafter – AI) with professional personnel have become really urgent. Due to the insufficient saturation of the labor market with such specialists, training is the main way to solve the problem. Therefore, in order to do this, it is necessary to answer the question of how many and in which professions specialists in the field of AI should be trained, taking into account the presence of overlapping competencies in these professions. The lack of generally recognized terminology in the names of professions and competencies in the field of AI does not allow for the correct assessment of personnel needs by direct monitoring of employers' vacancies and makes it difficult to plan the training of specialists for the field of AI. The purpose of this particular study is to systematize the competencies and professions in the field of AI based on a comparative analysis of the professional competencies of the relevant professions in leading Russian IT-companies with the professional competencies of the relevant professions of the labor market of the European Union and the USA Materials and methods. The materials of the study were as follows: data from Internet sites for job search about current vacancies in the basic specializations of the IT-industry. The basis of the Russian list of professions and competencies in the field of Data Science is a family of six specialties in the field of AI, formed by the “Alliance”, the center for the development of artificial intelligence in Russia, uniting leading Russian IT-companies. While forming the list of competencies for AI professions in the USA, the information resource of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics was used; as for professions in the European Union – the information resource “European multilingual classification of skills, competencies and professions” was taken as the recourse of the material. Results of the study. Within the framework of the conducted research, a scientifically based methodology was developed for comparing professions from different national classifiers of professions based on a competence-based approach. With its help, matrices of correspondence of the Alliance's professions with the professions of the USA and the European Union were built. For each profession of the Alliance, the professions closest in competence in the labor market in the field of AI in the European Union and the United States were identified. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that only one profession “Data Scientist” (among six “families” of basic professions considered by the Alliance) coincides with foreign ones by name. As for the other professions of the Alliance, the proportion of coincidence of third-level competencies in the professions of the European Union and the United States ranges from 0.33 to 1. Discussion and conclusion. The results of a comparative analysis of professions and competencies may be used for the vacancies search on job search sites. A quantitative assessment of vacancies will allow to build a forecast of personnel needs in the AI-field. The results obtained can be useful in the development of professional standards for professions and, as well as educational programs for training specialists in the AI-sphere.