Biography:
Sampath Tilakumara is “Director, Software Engineering” and a Distinguished Engineer at the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), with over 22 years of experience delivering ultra-low-latency trading systems and mission-critical capital market technologies. He currently works on the evaluation, development, and rollout of Agentic AI frameworks and AI-driven Software Development Lifecycle (AI-SDLC) practices at LSEG, bringing a practitioner’s perspective on adopting AI responsibly in high-stakes, regulated environments.
Who Gets Left Behind? AI, Work, and the Next Generation of Talent
We keep asking whether AI will take our jobs. The more urgent question is who is being prepared to work alongside it — and who isn’t.
This keynote argues that three shifts are colliding faster than our institutions can adapt. First, the shape of work itself is changing: as AI systems move from doing tasks for us to working with us autonomously, routine execution loses value while judgement, specification, verification, and orchestration gain it. Software is the leading edge of this pattern, not the whole of it.
Second, that transition is not evenly available. The real divide is not access to AI tools but access to the expertise to use them well — leaving smaller firms and developing economies at risk of becoming permanent consumers, rather than producers, of AI-driven value.
Third, and most consequentially, our education and hiring systems are the pipeline that decides who arrives ready. Curricula still train and test for skills AI now performs trivially. Assessment will have to shift from “can you produce the answer” to “can you frame the problem, judge the output, and catch the failure” — and employers will follow, valuing evaluative literacy over output volume.
For academics, this is an assessment design problem. For industry, a hiring problem. For policymakers, it is where national competitiveness will be won or lost.