PT
Demand for new AI skills is growing in step with dialogue across communities from different territories, and with a focus on the potential for impact with or without technology.
By José Brito, journalist, founder of Pupa Educação Digital and professor at the AI Lab of Colégio MOPI, in Rio de Janeiro.
“Artificial intelligence has stopped being a trend. Today it is already a strategic competency inside companies. More than mastering tools, the market needs professionals capable of using technology with critical sense, responsibility and a human vision. And it is precisely in this scenario that the course is born, focused on preparing people and teams to turn technology into real impact for businesses and for society.”
Isabela Esteves, founding partner of Lamparina Sustentabilidade e Comunicação.
Image generated with AI on Nano Banana. A pixel art illustration on a purple background shows diverse people and robots interacting with books, tablets, charts, idea light bulbs and globes around the central phrase “Digital Skills + AI,” with icons of science, environment and education symbolizing the ethical and inclusive use of technology.
This was a week of plenty of road under our feet, of conversations that warm the heart and of active listening. That is how I felt during the seminars on the future of work and the educommunication workshops I have been running with my colleague Alexandre Sayad for Itaipu Binacional. We were recently with more than 5,000 young people across municipalities in Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul. This time we passed through Cornélio Procópio, Jacarezinho, Ivaiporã and Cascavel.
We left every gathering with the same perception: there is an increasingly latent demand for new skills for the world of work. And there is barely any need to revisit the data I keep bringing here about the World Economic Forum, or the consultancy indicators that help us understand the picture of skills and competencies companies want all over the world. When the conversation about technology connects with a local agenda, one that truly matters to the people in the room, about public policy, social participation, the future of a profession, that is the moment engagement shifts to another level and the search for information takes on meaning.
In the talks, I usually open live polls with Mentimeter. A QR code on the big screen, phones at the ready, and the magic happens. The results are excellent: the answers appear to the group in real time, turn into debate, pull out spontaneous interviews and work as a living thermometer of what this new share of the workforce reaching the market thinks. The same young crowd that is 15 to 20 years old, who can vote in 2026, who will deal with the job search and with all the anxieties that surround today’s debate about technology. And it is there, in the heat of the auditorium, that it becomes evident how these digital skills have moved beyond a technical differentiator to become a question of how each person positions themselves in front of their own future. Every story represents a potential asset in the pursuit of a place in the sun. And the medium remains the message.
It is out of this scenario that the course Pupa is bringing to the market with Lumen Educação Executiva, from June 8 to 10, on Digital Skills and Learning with AI, is born. The activity is aimed at professionals and teams who already innovate and want to go beyond individual use of technology. The reading offered by Isabela Esteves, from Lamparina, brings the view of someone living this debate with Generation Z and ready for the next leap, and not only with artificial intelligence: the market is asking for people capable of using technology with critical sense, responsibility and a human vision. Isabela and I talked a great deal about this at the start of Pupa’s journey, also drawing on what Sabrina Petry, founding partner of Lamparina, has been developing for more than a decade in this market directly tied to cultural change and to advances in how we understand legislation, rights, duties and the commitments of society as a whole.
The path was designed as an arc applied to each participant’s business. In the first meeting, already next week on June 8, we start from the future of work and the new digital skills to discuss the transformations AI brings to communication, education and business, and we build market intelligence with research assisted by Perplexity and NotebookLM. On the second day, June 9, the dive is hands-on, with workshops on content production, automation and data analysis, exploring agents and assistants for real tasks with Gemini Nano Banana, Manus and Remotion Studio, always adaptable to each person’s profile and using each person’s own materials. In practice. In the third meeting, June 10, we close with ethics, governance and protocols for routines with specialized agents, integration and automations across Claude Cowork and Code, and the delivery of an integrated action plan for monitoring and managing with AI for each participant’s organization.
And we do not stop there, because as I always say, learning lasts a lifetime. Every day we are capable of leaving some contribution to the world and learning something new. I recommend a closer look at Pupa’s operational flow with AI, a map that connects agents and operations across three layers, from intelligence and sources to the production engines and the record. It is what we will share in practice, showing where each technology comes in at the service of a decision.
Let’s go!
Enrollment open: Course Digital Skills and Learning with AI (Lumen)
Check out the other highlights of the week and the reading tip! 😉
#1 Digital citizenship gains free material for educators
SaferNet, in partnership with the United Kingdom government, releases a workbook for teachers to introduce the topic to children in the early years of elementary school.
Source: SaferNet on Instagram
#2 UNESCO MIL Alliance opens a call for new chapters
The UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance is receiving applications to create new chapters. Submissions open until July 30.
Source: UNESCO MIL Alliance | Application
#3 REC’n’Play prepares its September edition at Porto Digital
One of the country’s largest gatherings of technology and digital culture returns to Recife in September, at Porto Digital, with registration already open.
Source: REC’n’Play on Instagram
#4 Virgílio Almeida analyzes AI’s disruption of the labor market
The professor affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard shares an analysis of AI’s effects on the world of work.
Source: Virgílio Almeida on LinkedIn
#5 FAPESP launches the first call of its program in Computer Science with AI
FAPESP’s strategic program in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence opens its first call, fostering research in São Paulo.
Source: CONFAP
READING TIP » 📚
Futebol Lado B
Author: Ariel Palacios
Publisher: Globo Livros
Year: 2026
Cover of the book “Futebol Lado B,” by Ariel Palacios (Globo Livros), with a blue background and the title in three-dimensional yellow letters, flanked by the World Cup trophy. Over a cartoon-style football stadium, dozens of caricatures mingle: stars such as Maradona, Messi and Pelé, alongside referees, uniformed dictators, an octopus, a flying saucer and a war tank. The subtitle sums up the tone: “Among gods, dribbles, dictators and deliriums: the absurd, the improbable and the genius of the most beloved sport in the world.”
It´s time!!! As Galvão Bueno would say, with the football clichés that have crossed generations. A little more than 10 days from the planet’s biggest football competition, I leave you a tip that crosses the subject in an atypical way and with plenty of information. It could be no one but another journalist, Ariel Palácios, a long-road correspondent and a deep connoisseur of Latin America’s historical and current backstage.
The book gathers little-told stories in which sport intersects with politics, culture and the absurdities of our time. Required reading for anyone who, like me, loves football and enjoys a good political take on history and behind-the-scenes affairs. Discover how a single theme, looked at up close and with good humor, reveals far more about the world around us, exactly the kind of connections we exercise together week after week here in the Radar.
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