Flowing with AI's growth highlighted at skills event
Participants in global competition focus on utilizing new tech, upgrading capabilities
Qiu Mengying, 25, is confident that her aircraft engineer job is indispensable and has no fear she will be replaced by intelligent machines.
Despite heated debate over the threat to the workforce posed by artificial intelligence, Qiu, a member of an aircraft maintenance training team that participated in the recent 48th WorldSkills Competition, said: "In our profession, AI is just a helper. It is not here to replace us."
The seven skills added to this year's event, which concluded in Shanghai on Sept 27, are unique and hard to automate, she added. "These new skills reflect the latest trends in occupational development and industrial upgrading," said Qiu, while demonstrating her aircraft maintenance skills at the China Eastern Airlines exhibition booth.
"They send a signal to more students and young people about where career opportunities are headed, while helping them gain a clearer understanding of their own career plans."
Future requirements
Unlike many standardized and repetitive jobs, the new skills included in the competition offered a glimpse of the expertise workers will need as industries transform and develop.
Known as a bellwether of industrial upgrades and employment trends, WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 helped shed light on "irreplaceable occupations" despite AI's spread, said officials and participants.
The skills look to tap into the core employment requirements of digitalization, multidisciplinary and specialized skills. They send clear signals that despite the overwhelming application of AI across various cutting-edge sectors — including digital economy, smart infrastructure and modern commerce — humans cannot be replaced by intelligent machines, the officials and participants said.
"There are a total of 64 skills at this year's competition, including seven new skills appearing at the event for the first time," Wu Liduo, director general of occupational capacity building at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said during a State Council Information Office news conference in Beijing in June.
