DAVOS: Human skills will remain crucial in managing the new digital revolution, experts told the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos.

In a panel discussion on technology’s role as an accelerator of progress, experts agreed that the advantage of emerging trends is based on their ability to serve human needs.

Julie Sweet, chairperson and CEO of Accenture, said that to properly manage the emergence of megatrends, such as artificial intelligence, the metaverse, 5G and quantum computing, companies and governments must focus on improving people’s skills.

With different demographics among countries, the common solution is to “focus on skills instead of jobs and roles,” she said.

Sweet urged governments and companies to utilize employees’ interest in digital literacy and consumer daily use of technologies as a “positive momentum for solutions.”

While platforms such as the AI-driven ChatGPT can be beneficial for education, it will need “efficient human skills” to feed it with “clean data,” Sweet said.

Even the rapid growth of the metaverse lies in “tapping into human need and creating something new, which doesn’t exist,” said Sweet, who estimated that $1 trillion revenue will be influenced by the metaverse by 2025.

Cristiano Amon, president and and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated, said the acceleration in technology adoption in businesses is increasing connectivity, performance and productivity.

Merging the physical and digital spaces will form the next-generation computing platforms, he said.

Discussing whether AI will replace humans in the workplace, Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises, said jobs lost amid the shifting labor market will be replaced by new areas of work created by technologies.

“Instead, we must start to think of a life where AI is going to play a fundamental role in our daily lives in areas such as material science, chemicals, biochemicals and human life issues,” said Mittal.

Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, said that concern should be focused on clerical white-collar jobs, which are more likely to be replaced by AI than those requiring physical labor.

“What will you create to replace those? That’s where we have to focus,” he said.