AI is changing computing. What should future IT professionals learn?

How should universities prepare the next generation of IT professionals for a world in which AI is becoming an integral part of computing?

That question will take stage at The Future of IT Education in the Age of AI, a session at Digital Tech Summit that brings together voices from academia, industry, and the Danish Society of Engineers (IDA) to discuss how AI is reshaping both the profession and the education of future graduates. (Digital Tech Summit is free to attend – sign up here .)

According to Kim Knudsen, Professor and Head of Education at DTU Compute and moderator of the session, the discussion starts with a shift that is already taking place across the profession:

“Some of the tasks that we previously educated engineers or other IT professionals to perform that are increasingly being taken over by AI systems. The work tasks are shifting. Perhaps software development is something anybody can handle in the future. So, what kind of labour market are we actually educating people for?”

At the same time, universities are facing another challenge.

“Even though the need for IT educated people is strong and job opportunities remain good, fewer students want to enroll in our IT programmes. We need to understand what is going on. This is both a national and in fact global challenge,” Kim Knudsen says.

The need for IT expertise is not disappearing

While AI is transforming the nature of computing work, Kim Knudsen argues that this does not mean society needs fewer IT professionals.

“An IT education is about far more than programming. It is about complex systems, created by people for people. If we want human insight and human oversight of AI systems in the future, then that requires us to educate highly competent people. So, we see a need for more and better IT-educated people. We need to attract the people who can take on an education that is demanding and challenging, and we need to educate for a labour market that is in motion,” he says.

One of the central themes of the session at Digital Tech Summit will therefore be the capabilities graduates need in order to work with critical thinking to evaluate and shape increasingly powerful AI systems.

For Kim Knudsen the issue extends far beyond technology itself:

“It is about who we are building AI systems for and where they are deployed. If it is healthcare, or if it is something that regulates people’s everyday lives in one way or another, then we need to understand it. There are ethical issues we need to understand. There is transparency that needs to be understood.”