Hitachi is planning to train 50,000 employees by 2027 in order to create new services through advanced artificial intelligence (AI).
This training program will involve around 20% of Hitachi’s 270,000 workers. Staff from different fields such as information technology and railroads will be taught.
The use of AI has been widely applied in making internal operations more efficient and growing businesses.
The company wants to remain competitive by nurturing skilled AI personnel.
It will provide special lessons on generative AI, teaching staff how to apply it in services and products, collect data and build large-scale language models.
Currently, only a few workers utilise AI to propose new services for customers.
Generative AI will be deployed in key areas like IT, railroads and energy.
For example, the Japanese firm is developing an AI system that simulates train problems — failures or fires — in a virtual space. This allows railroad staff to safely learn how to deal with such issues. From the development stage through sales activities, experts in the technology will be involved.
According to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), the global market for generative AI will expand more than 20-fold from ¥10.5tn ($101bn) in 2023 to ¥42tn ($211bn) by 2030. Some ¥40.8tn of this growth will come from developing services and systems using generative AI. The effective use of AI can have great influence on corporate growth.
This year Hitachi teamed up with Google, Microsoft and Nvidia on using AI. It aims at adopting their cutting-edge technologies and knowledge on artificial intelligence.
Competition for talent is heating up. NTT Data plans to spend about JPY100bn ($640m) domestically by fiscal year 2025 acquiring companies with expertise in AI technologies while NEC among other corporations are swiftly fostering its own artificial intelligence human resources base.
Source: nikkei
