Real-world scenarios to bridge the AI skills gap

The training helps individuals develop practical skills while they solve real-world problems

Spotted: Today, the world faces a global AI skills shortage, with one survey by Salesforce finding that only one in ten global workers have AI skills. This means that purpose-driven organisations struggle to efficiently find employees who know how to practically apply AI to the world’s most pressing challenges. 

Upskilling is one solution to this problem, and startup FruitPunch AI delivers training based around 10-week ‘challenges’, where participants learn through solving real-world data problems, supervised by expert mentors.  

Over the course of these projects the startup gains deep insight into each individual’s skills, abilities, preferences, and working styles, meaning they can be effectively matched to companies who need AI talent. The detailed assessments enable employers to trace each individual’s hard and soft skills to a specific solution they have delivered or a specific piece of code they have written during the challenge.

This means that companies no longer need to rely on self-reported capabilities but on skills that have been tested and peer reviewed in real-world scenarios. As a result, they can spend more time assessing intangible success factors such as cultural fit.  

The challenges are bundled into three main areas. The AI for Wildlife Lab focuses on preserving biodiversity, the AI for Earth lab works on halting and mitigating climate change, and the AI for Health lab seeks to improve public health. Each challenge includes instruction, mentoring, and problem-solving, and those who complete a challenge earn a certification for their role in the project. Organisations can also use the platform for training their own colleagues.

Written By: Keely Khoury and Matthew Hempstead