Read the full article below (in Italian):
It’s not uncommon to hear stories from people who have committed several years to obtaining a university degree, only to discover it doesn’t fit the purposes they need when entering the business world.
Why? Even though universities spend years developing their degree courses in areas such as economics, business, and biomedical science, it is challenging to keep up with the latest technological advancements due to the lengthy approval process and a lack of experts on staff.
Today, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cloud computing, and cybersecurity are beginning to impact every aspect of our business lives, regardless of whether you work in a cutting-edge science lab or an antiquities museum. However, many graduates fail to leverage this new technology and adapt it to their careers.
This is why OPIT – the Open Institute of Technology – was born, to offer affordable and accessible courses that bridge the gap between what is taught in traditional universities and what the job market requires.
How Is the Job Market Changing?
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, 92 million jobs will be displaced by new technologies, though 170 million new jobs will be created that utilize new technology.
The report suggests that 39% of the key skills required in the job market will change by 2030. These include hard technical skills and the soft skills needed to work in creative environments where change is a constant.
New job descriptions will look for big data specialists, fintech engineers, and AI and machine learning specialists. Additionally, employers will also be seeking creative thinkers who are flexible and agile, as well as resilient in the face of change.
Technology-focused jobs that are in increasing demand include:
- Machine Learning Engineer – Developing and refining algorithms that enable systems to learn from data and improve performance.
- Natural Language Processing Specialist – Developing chatbots that can understand users, communicate naturally, and provide valuable assistance.
- AI Ethicist – Ensuring that AI is developed and deployed with broader social, legal, and moral implications considered.
- Data Architect – Gathering raw data from different sources and designing infrastructure that consolidates this information and makes it usable.
- Chief Data Officer – Leading a company’s data collection and application strategy, ensuring data-driven decision-makers.
- Cybersecurity Engineer – Building information security systems and IT architecture, and protecting them from unauthorized access and cyberattacks.
Over the next few years, we can expect most jobs to require an understanding of the applications for cutting-edge technology, if not how to manage the technical backend. Leaders need to know how to implement AI and automation to save time and reduce errors. Researchers need to understand how to leverage data to reveal new findings, and everyone needs to understand how to work in secure digital environments.
The conclusion is that in tomorrow’s job market, workers will need to find the right balance of technical and human skills to thrive.
A New Approach to Learning Is Needed
Learning requires a fundamental change. Just as businesses need to be adaptable, places of higher learning need to be more adaptable too, keeping their offerings up-to-date and reducing the timescales required to accredit and deliver new courses fit for the current job market.
This aligns with OPIT’s mission to unlock progress and employment on a global scale by providing high-quality and affordable education in the field of technology.
How Does OPIT Work?
OPIT is accredited with the MFHEA (Malta Further and Higher Education Authority) in accordance with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF).
Working with an evolving faculty of experts, OPIT offers a technological education aligned with the current and future career market.
Currently, OPIT offers two Bachelor’s degrees:
- Digital Business – Focuses on merging business acumen with digital fluency, bridging the strategy-execution gap in the evolving digital age.
- Modern Computer Science – Establishes 360-degree foundation skills, both theoretical and applicative, in all aspects of today’s computer science. It includes programming, software development, the cloud, cybersecurity, data science, and AI.
OPIT also offers four Master’s degrees:
- Digital Business & Innovation – Empowers professionals to drive innovation by leveraging digital technologies and AI, covering topics such as strategy, digital marketing, customer value management, and AI applications.
- Responsible Artificial Intelligence – Combines technical expertise with a focus on the ethical implications of modern AI, including sustainability and environmental impact.
- Enterprise Cybersecurity – Integrates technical and managerial expertise, equipping students with the skills to implement security solutions and lead cybersecurity initiatives.
- Applied Data Science & AI – Focuses on the intersection between management and tech with no computer science prerequisites. It provides foundation applicative courses coupled with real-world business problems approached with data science and AI.
Courses offer flexible online learning, with both live online-native classes and recorded catch-up sessions. Every course is hands-on and career-aligned, preparing students for multiple career options while working with top professionals.
Current faculty members include Zorina Alliata, principal AI strategist at Amazon; Sylvester Kaczmarek, AI mentor and researcher at NASA; Andrea Gozzi, head of Strategy and Partnership for the Digital Industries Ecosystem at Siemens; and Raj Dasgupta, AI and machine learning scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
OPIT designs its courses to be accessible and affordable, with a dedicated career services department that offers one-on-one career coaching and advice.
Graduating From OPIT
OPIT recently held its first graduation ceremony for students in 2025. Students described their experience with OPIT as unique, innovative, and inspiring. Share the experience of OPIT’s very first graduates in the video here.
If you are curious to learn more about the OPIT student community, OPIT can connect you with a current student. Just reach out.
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From the same author
Read the articleSource:
- Agenda Digitale, published on June 16th, 2025
By Lokesh Vij, Professor of Cloud Computing Infrastructure, Cloud Development, Cloud Computing Automation and Ops and Cloud Data Stacks at OPIT – Open Institute of Technology
NIST identifies five key characteristics of cloud computing: on-demand self-service, network access, resource pooling, elasticity, and metered service. These pillars explain the success of the global cloud market of 912 billion in 2025
Read the articleYou’ve probably seen two of the most recent popular social media trends. The first is creating and posting your personalized action figure version of yourself, complete with personalized accessories, from a yoga mat to your favorite musical instrument. There is also the Studio Ghibli trend, which creates an image of you in the style of a character from one of the animation studio’s popular films.
Both of these are possible thanks to OpenAI’s GPT-4o-powered image generator. But what are you risking when you upload a picture to generate this kind of content? More than you might imagine, according to Tom Vazdar, chair of cybersecurity at the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT), in a recent interview with Wired. Let’s take a closer look at the risks and how this issue ties into the issue of responsible artificial intelligence.
Uploading Your Image
To get a personalized image of yourself back from ChatGPT, you need to upload an actual photo, or potentially multiple images, and tell ChatGPT what you want. But in addition to using your image to generate content for you, OpenAI could also be using your willingly submitted image to help train its AI model. Vazdar, who is also CEO and AI & Cybersecurity Strategist at Riskoria and a board member for the Croatian AI Association, says that this kind of content is “a gold mine for training generative models,” but you have limited power over how that image is integrated into their training strategy.
Plus, you are uploading much more than just an image of yourself. Vazdar reminds us that we are handing over “an entire bundle of metadata.” This includes the EXIF data attached to the image, such as exactly when and where the photo was taken. And your photo may have more content in it than you imagine, with the background – including people, landmarks, and objects – also able to be tied to that time and place.
In addition to this, OpenAI also collects data about the device that you are using to engage with the platform, and, according to Vazdar, “There’s also behavioral data, such as what you typed, what kind of image you asked for, how you interacted with the interface and the frequency of those actions.”
After all that, OpenAI knows a lot about you, and soon, so could their AI model, because it is studying you.
How OpenAI Uses Your Data
OpenAI claims that they did not orchestrate these social media trends simply to get training data for their AI, and that’s almost certainly true. But they also aren’t denying that access to that freely uploaded data is a bonus. As Vazdar points out, “This trend, whether by design or a convenient opportunity, is providing the company with massive volumes of fresh, high-quality facial data from diverse age groups, ethnicities, and geographies.”
OpenAI isn’t the only company using your data to train its AI. Meta recently updated its privacy policy to allow the company to use your personal information on Meta-related services, such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to train its AI. While it is possible to opt-out, Meta isn’t advertising that fact or making it easy, which means that most users are sharing their data by default.
You can also control what happens with your data when using ChatGPT. Again, while not well publicized, you can use ChatGPT’s self-service tools to access, export, and delete your personal information, and opt out of having your content used to improve OpenAI’s model. Nevertheless, even if you choose these options, it is still worth it to strip data like location and time from images before uploading them and to consider the privacy of any images, including people and objects in the background, before sharing.
Are Data Protection Laws Keeping Up?
OpenAI and Meta need to provide these kinds of opt-outs due to data protection laws, such as GDPR in the EU and the UK. GDPR gives you the right to access or delete your data, and the use of biometric data requires your explicit consent. However, your photo only becomes biometric data when it is processed using a specific technical measure that allows for the unique identification of an individual.
But just because ChatGPT is not using this technology, doesn’t mean that ChatGPT can’t learn a lot about you from your images.
AI and Ethics Concerns
But you might wonder, “Isn’t it a good thing that AI is being trained using a diverse range of photos?” After all, there have been widespread reports in the past of AI struggling to recognize black faces because they have been trained mostly on white faces. Similarly, there have been reports of bias within AI due to the information it receives. Doesn’t sharing from a wide range of users help combat that? Yes, but there is so much more that could be done with that data without your knowledge or consent.
One of the biggest risks is that the data can be manipulated for marketing purposes, not just to get you to buy products, but also potentially to manipulate behavior. Take, for instance, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw AI used to manipulate voters and the proliferation of deepfakes sharing false news.
Vazdar believes that AI should be used to promote human freedom and autonomy, not threaten it. It should be something that benefits humanity in the broadest possible sense, and not just those with the power to develop and profit from AI.
Responsible Artificial Intelligence
OPIT’s Master’s in Responsible AI combines technical expertise with a focus on the ethical implications of AI, diving into questions such as this one. Focusing on real-world applications, the course considers sustainable AI, environmental impact, ethical considerations, and social responsibility.
Completed over three or four 13-week terms, it starts with a foundation in technical artificial intelligence and then moves on to advanced AI applications. Students finish with a Capstone project, which sees them apply what they have learned to real-world problems.
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Related posts
Source:
- Agenda Digitale, published on June 16th, 2025
By Lokesh Vij, Professor of Cloud Computing Infrastructure, Cloud Development, Cloud Computing Automation and Ops and Cloud Data Stacks at OPIT – Open Institute of Technology
NIST identifies five key characteristics of cloud computing: on-demand self-service, network access, resource pooling, elasticity, and metered service. These pillars explain the success of the global cloud market of 912 billion in 2025
Read the full article below (in Italian):
You’ve probably seen two of the most recent popular social media trends. The first is creating and posting your personalized action figure version of yourself, complete with personalized accessories, from a yoga mat to your favorite musical instrument. There is also the Studio Ghibli trend, which creates an image of you in the style of a character from one of the animation studio’s popular films.
Both of these are possible thanks to OpenAI’s GPT-4o-powered image generator. But what are you risking when you upload a picture to generate this kind of content? More than you might imagine, according to Tom Vazdar, chair of cybersecurity at the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT), in a recent interview with Wired. Let’s take a closer look at the risks and how this issue ties into the issue of responsible artificial intelligence.
Uploading Your Image
To get a personalized image of yourself back from ChatGPT, you need to upload an actual photo, or potentially multiple images, and tell ChatGPT what you want. But in addition to using your image to generate content for you, OpenAI could also be using your willingly submitted image to help train its AI model. Vazdar, who is also CEO and AI & Cybersecurity Strategist at Riskoria and a board member for the Croatian AI Association, says that this kind of content is “a gold mine for training generative models,” but you have limited power over how that image is integrated into their training strategy.
Plus, you are uploading much more than just an image of yourself. Vazdar reminds us that we are handing over “an entire bundle of metadata.” This includes the EXIF data attached to the image, such as exactly when and where the photo was taken. And your photo may have more content in it than you imagine, with the background – including people, landmarks, and objects – also able to be tied to that time and place.
In addition to this, OpenAI also collects data about the device that you are using to engage with the platform, and, according to Vazdar, “There’s also behavioral data, such as what you typed, what kind of image you asked for, how you interacted with the interface and the frequency of those actions.”
After all that, OpenAI knows a lot about you, and soon, so could their AI model, because it is studying you.
How OpenAI Uses Your Data
OpenAI claims that they did not orchestrate these social media trends simply to get training data for their AI, and that’s almost certainly true. But they also aren’t denying that access to that freely uploaded data is a bonus. As Vazdar points out, “This trend, whether by design or a convenient opportunity, is providing the company with massive volumes of fresh, high-quality facial data from diverse age groups, ethnicities, and geographies.”
OpenAI isn’t the only company using your data to train its AI. Meta recently updated its privacy policy to allow the company to use your personal information on Meta-related services, such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to train its AI. While it is possible to opt-out, Meta isn’t advertising that fact or making it easy, which means that most users are sharing their data by default.
You can also control what happens with your data when using ChatGPT. Again, while not well publicized, you can use ChatGPT’s self-service tools to access, export, and delete your personal information, and opt out of having your content used to improve OpenAI’s model. Nevertheless, even if you choose these options, it is still worth it to strip data like location and time from images before uploading them and to consider the privacy of any images, including people and objects in the background, before sharing.
Are Data Protection Laws Keeping Up?
OpenAI and Meta need to provide these kinds of opt-outs due to data protection laws, such as GDPR in the EU and the UK. GDPR gives you the right to access or delete your data, and the use of biometric data requires your explicit consent. However, your photo only becomes biometric data when it is processed using a specific technical measure that allows for the unique identification of an individual.
But just because ChatGPT is not using this technology, doesn’t mean that ChatGPT can’t learn a lot about you from your images.
AI and Ethics Concerns
But you might wonder, “Isn’t it a good thing that AI is being trained using a diverse range of photos?” After all, there have been widespread reports in the past of AI struggling to recognize black faces because they have been trained mostly on white faces. Similarly, there have been reports of bias within AI due to the information it receives. Doesn’t sharing from a wide range of users help combat that? Yes, but there is so much more that could be done with that data without your knowledge or consent.
One of the biggest risks is that the data can be manipulated for marketing purposes, not just to get you to buy products, but also potentially to manipulate behavior. Take, for instance, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw AI used to manipulate voters and the proliferation of deepfakes sharing false news.
Vazdar believes that AI should be used to promote human freedom and autonomy, not threaten it. It should be something that benefits humanity in the broadest possible sense, and not just those with the power to develop and profit from AI.
Responsible Artificial Intelligence
OPIT’s Master’s in Responsible AI combines technical expertise with a focus on the ethical implications of AI, diving into questions such as this one. Focusing on real-world applications, the course considers sustainable AI, environmental impact, ethical considerations, and social responsibility.
Completed over three or four 13-week terms, it starts with a foundation in technical artificial intelligence and then moves on to advanced AI applications. Students finish with a Capstone project, which sees them apply what they have learned to real-world problems.
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