Artificial intelligence (AI) will, for the foreseeable future, have a significant disruptive impact on jobs. That said, this disruption can create new opportunities if policymakers choose to harness them—including some with the potential to help address long-standing social inequities.

Machines are an equal opportunity displacer, blind to color and socioeconomic status.

Investing in quality training programs that deliver premium skills, such as computational analysis and cognitive thinking, provides a real opportunity to leverage AI’s disruptive power.

A recent IBM report expertly quantifies the scope and breadth of employers’ hiring demands, noting that “[d]emand for data-driven decision makers, such as data-enabled marketing managers, will comprise one-third of the data savvy professional job market, with a projected increase of 110,000 positions by 2020.” Herein lies a window of opportunity: the rapidly growing technical skills gap.

Read the full article on artificial intelligence by Makada Henry-Nickie at Brookings