" IT education definitely faces a lot great challenges, since his role is quite often to prepare his students for something that is not entirely certain, something that is yet to emerge. Such is the role of teachers in it, such is the situation in which we find ourselves. And I could even say that, in fact, we are in a modern new industrial revolution, connected precisely with artificial intelligence.
This was explained to FOCUS by software engineer and teacher Petar Petrov.
What do you think will be the professions of the future?
Professions of the future will obviously be related to artificial intelligence, but not only. Artificial intelligence itself needs a certain information structure. Simply put, these are the cables we get the Internet over, but not just the cables – any wireless communications, but also then the machines themselves – servers, special devices, any configurations. Here, "Information infrastructure" includes all kinds of cloud infrastructures, data storage and everything else, since artificial intelligence needs the information infrastructure itself, system administrators, and the issue of cyber security is quite serious. We have wrapped all this in a new profession, which is called "Information Infrastructure".
Besides "Information Infrastructure", an important part is the profession of "Information Systems", which is actually related to the development, management and maintenance of the information systems that contain the data. From there, artificial intelligence will be able to draw data, but in addition, people will continue to work with such systems. Intelligent systems now package all of this together, where you will actually study AI tool development, how to create new language large models, such as the one using ChatGTP chat, or how to create or train neural networks, how how they connect to IoT devices and how the data that actually arrives from all these devices is processed together.
This is the third profession for "Intelligent Systems". In addition, the data analysis profession itself is a very important part. The presence of artificial intelligence in our future, and already in the present, is a big prerequisite to collect huge amounts of data. These amounts of data must be processed in order for decisions to be made by both the software and the people who operate that software. There, it is very important to make decisions based on the so-called "data mining" in English, or in Bulgarian "extracting knowledge from data", as this is a very new and serious field related to data science. And within the work of our Sectoral Council, we identified a need for such a profession. Another profession that is needed is software development. It is already established as a classic.
Despite the huge presence of artificial intelligence, it will not actually take over the jobs of programmers. On the contrary, programmers will continue to have work and will begin to do it even more efficiently, since artificial intelligence is first and foremost a tool that actually multiplies the knowledge and skills of the people who use it. Within the software development profession, databases are also studied, as well as all the necessary tools for teamwork in the field of software development.
Another important profession, which is actually extremely important and is very widely sought after in the labor market, including in recent years, is the so-called "Software Quality Assurance", in English "Quality Assurance". This profession encompasses the practices of software testing, finding defects, and especially defects related not only to its usability by humans, but actually to its security, as in the future computer security – the so-called "cyber security", will be an increasing challenge. Our Sectoral Council also offers the profession "Automation and control technology". "Automation and control technology" is a very important profession that is actually related to the modern means of automation in production, because not everything will be able to be done only in the digital world, we continue to need all kinds of machines, all kinds of devices that are produced in factories on the flow line.
And in fact, this profession prepares specialists who will be able to create and maintain such factories. Another related to this profession is robotics. In fact, we offer robotics as a completely independent profession, because the future belongs to robots, in addition to artificial intelligence. Robots will become an increasingly widely used tool that we need. Beyond robots, another very important profession we offer is drones. This profession is related to the so-called "drones", which proved both their serious application for civilian purposes and, in fact, the enormous importance for military ones. In Bulgaria, even now, agricultural drones are being used quite seriously and such devices are being developed, as this has a huge potential for development in the future, including the possibility even for food deliveries, instead of by bike or car.
And several other important professions, which are rather classic, but we keep them, because it is important that education is not modernized, just to introduce new and unproven things – it is important to bring in new things that are needed, but also to keep the well-played and traditional old professions that are still needed. This is, for example, a profession "Computer systems and technology", which is actually related to computer hardware, communication computer networks, which is related to the hardware organization itself of computer, optical, mobile networks, 5G, 6G, which we expect to enter, and we expect to significantly increase the growth of the so-called "Internet of things" devices – devices from the Internet of Things that need quite serious communication networks.
Mr Petrov, what other professions can we share here since we started listing?
Yes, other important professions are actually related to electronics, such as "Electronics and Technology", as we will continue to work with devices in the future. These devices, as perfect as they are, will continue to break and we will need technicians to fix them. The role of this profession is to prepare precisely such specialists who can take care of our devices in the future. Another thing that we will certainly continue to have in the future are cinema, audio and video systems. It is also a very key profession that is related to the media, to the arts. The role of this profession is to prepare both operators and sound engineers, as well as technicians of all the necessary equipment to carry out the work of the media, be it televisions, radios or other types of digital media that we are about to become more and more familiar with. .
Yes, it will affect us on the airwaves, for sure, but it is important to keep up with all these changes. "The Digital Backpack" of the Ministry of Education and Science and the good experience in creating electronic learning resources under the National Program "Training for IT Skills and Career" also have a contribution. Let's briefly talk about this contribution.
Yes. I myself am part of the team that works on the National Program "Training for IT skills and careers". since the very creation of the program in 2017. Then, in fact, the profession "Applied Programmer" entered for the first time, which was a new profession, but already several years later we are reaping the good fruits that came out of it. We now have numerous students who have successfully completed both the National Program and acquired the profession and started working in business. Many schools have revealed such a profession and related professions. And when we started work, in this profession we did not have any training materials created. It was a big challenge for nearly a hundred teachers from all over the country who started working with the first graduating class.
Within this program, the Ministry of Education and Culture has created some digital training materials. I believe that the idea of the "Digital Backpack" that came up recently has something to do with what we did there, as these materials have proven to be beneficial to teachers across the country, not just those participating in the program, as as they were also adopted by the teachers who teach both in the "Applied Programmer" profession and in the profiled classes of software and hardware sciences. I believe that the "Digital Backpack" will continue to be important for these new professions that we offer, as it allows to create not just e-learning materials, as we used to call actually the presentations we made on PowerPoint or some other medium, but much more advanced and modern digital and learning resources that are not only a source of knowledge, but enable students to learn interactively through them. "The Digital Backpack" makes this possible.
What are the biggest challenges facing IT education in Bulgaria?
IT education definitely faces quite big challenges, as its role is quite often to prepare its students for something that is not entirely certain, something that is just emerging. Such is the role of teachers in it, such is the situation in which we find ourselves. And I could even say that, in fact, we are in a modern new industrial revolution, related precisely to artificial intelligence. A big challenge for quite a few of our colleagues is that we actually need help from the business side.
And things can't just happen in the classroom. Of course, there are also many good examples in which people from the IT business enter classes, lead various lectures, workshops, and often we, with students, visit their offices. In the future, we sincerely hope – and this is far from my own opinion, but that of quite a few colleagues with whom I have spoken, that our interaction with the IT business will become even more serious, and why not even on a daily basis. Furthermore, the IT business recognizes the same purpose that we recognize – to make Bulgaria a technological leader in the Balkans, and why not even in Eastern Europe.
We have quite a lot of potential, thanks to the new Institute for Artificial Intelligence INSAIT, as well as the great traditions that Bulgaria actually has since before 1989, both in mathematics, in the Olympiads, and in informatics, actually in Bulgaria The International Informatics Olympiad was founded and Bulgarian software engineers have proven their quality more than once.