Do humans still need professional skills in the era of artificial intelligence? WorldSkills Competition experts see it this way

China News Service, Shanghai, September 25 (Reporter Zheng Yingying) Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities continue to advance. Do humans still need to hone professional skills? At the 48th WorldSkills Competition being held in Shanghai, Dihanroy Mitchell, an expert on autonomous mobile robots from Jamaica, gave the answer: To cooperate with AI, humans need to master skills.

In his opinion, there are two reasons. On the one hand, skills belong to oneself. Only when humans master skills can they better guide artificial intelligence to perform tasks as required. On the other hand, even if AI can handle a large number of tasks, there are still situations such as power system failures, and humans still need to know how to work.

Shanghai, where the 48th WorldSkills Competition is held, is one of the hottest places for the development of artificial intelligence in China. In 2018, the scale of Shanghai's artificial intelligence industry was RMB 134 billion. By 2025, Shanghai will have 394 artificial intelligence companies above designated size, with an industry scale of over 637 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.5%.

Zhang Jianzheng, one of the "Shanghai Craftsmen" in 2025 and the founder and CEO of Shanghai robot company Sazhi Intelligence, pointed out in an interview with a reporter from China News Service on related topics that the real proposition of the integration of human-machine skills is not "machine substitution", but "human-machine advancement together."

He said that on the one hand, robots must gradually have the ability to perceive the environment, understand tasks, make decisions and execute autonomously, and on the other hand, the experience of craftsmen must be accumulated from individual touch to reusable intelligent capabilities. "The spirit of craftsmanship in people has not disappeared, but has extended from 'doing it with your own hands' to 'teaching machines to do it', and then freeing up energy to solve new problems that machines cannot solve."

Another artificial intelligence company in Shanghai, SenseTime, focuses on offline retail scenarios and has launched siomai shopping robot stores. More than 20 of them have been launched, and it plans to open its first store in Hong Kong in October. The store's robot clerk sells goods when busy and chats when free, often attracting consumers to experience "new consumption."

Regarding the relationship between humans and machines, Yi Shuai, co-founder and chief scientist of SenseTime, took medical care as an example during an interview and said that many inspection and testing items in Western medicine have been automated, but this does not prevent medical workers from exploring the boundaries of the entire field.

SenseTime recently released a retail physical operating system to help further automate robot store clerks. "In the future, machines will precipitate standardized content, and humans can do more creative work and develop new business models on this basis," Yi Shuai said.

On the evening of September 22, the 48th World Skills Competition opened in Shanghai. The picture shows actors performing with the latest generation of humanoid robots. Photo by China News Service reporter Yin Liqin

Inside and outside the arena, man and machine "dance" together. AI is redefining "one skill", and human-machine collaboration may usher in a new starting point for skill iteration.