Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Job Creators, Not Killers

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no more a buzz, there is a crescendo of a misconception that it will replace human jobs in future. Though, this will apply only to certain jobs, more that of generic work profiles, but not all. In fact, it will create newer jobs, more than we are yet unheard of. Currently, India stands fifth in the world among its competitors UK and Germany and is way behind China, the US and Japan as per a research by robotic process automation company UiPath.

With Responsibilities Come Challenges

No doubt there will be more new challenges for businesses, but that will come with opportunities to devise new methods to nurture the existing skill-sets of the AI-savvy experts and thus overcome the emerging impediments. The major drawback, however, in the Indian scenario is – the paucity of requisite talent. Today India lags because of the slower adoption of AI across the businesses, which is due to the shortage of adequate people with relevant skills.

Also, India’s investment in the local innovation system is quite less, hence insufficient. The investments in AI as compared to the EU or China are limited. However, this can be overcome as India has reputed universities that are known for crafting some of the best tech leadership driving innovations on a global level. India has a great potential in AI and was thus ranked third among G20 countries in terms of the number of AI startups.

Abhishek Agarwal, Senior Vice President, Judge Group

Extra Efforts

To bridge this widening gap and prepare the labour market for an AI-dominated future, the government should come out with new initiatives and give tech training to the workforce. It should analyze and help nurture their existing skills to utilize Artificial Intelligence innovations and thus excel in the AI world. The government should also promote a constant learning culture across the country to help these workers take the charge.

As per the research firm Gartner, AI will lead to the creation of around 2.3 million new jobs and elimination of 1.8 million jobs in 2020. On the other hand, AI augmentation is likely to create $2.9 trillion in business value and recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity in 2021.  Remember not to confuse AI with automation.

Artificial Intelligence Beneficiaries and Victims

Artificial Intelligence will reshape many industries, mostly, by increasing the efficiency of workers. Be it healthcare, removal of farmer poverty or be it education, AI will help develop many areas. More importantly, it will have a massive social impact on various communities across India and around the world.

The time is not so far when robots will be helping sanitation workers to clean washrooms, providing access to quality education to school children or giving the blind the power to ‘see’. On the flipside, 52-69 per cent of predictive and repetitive roles in sectors like IT, manufacturing, finance, shipping, packaging and transportation will experience the risk of automation in the coming years, as per a study by Teamlease Services.

It’s just that the age-old traditional practices will gradually remodel with AI and its tech-driven tools. Humans will soon have more prowess when it comes to resolving complex problems. And those whose roles may get replaced in the journey will find higher-value-added jobs over the years. For instance, a financial analyst’s role will get substituted by an adviser or a customer service executive by that of a customer interaction executive.

What does the Artificial Intelligence future hold?

The future will be all about new job creations and more role substitutions. There will be a spike in the salaries in the wake of specialization of skills and under qualified talent being switched to new capabilities. A survey by EY and Nasscom says that 9 per cent of the workforce will be given new jobs that do not exist today, 37 per cent will fall in the category of radically changed skill-sets and 54 per cent will remain in unchanged jobs.

AI will give birth to an augmented work culture that will be based on how well companies fuse AI into the abilities of human to spawn collaborative results. A few most interesting job titles will be Man-Machine Teaming Manager, AI Business Development Manager, Bring Your Own IT Facilitator (BYOITF), Data Detective and AI-Assisted Healthcare Technician.

As AI steps in and revolutionizes the work culture, the businesses in India should relook at the skill-sets of their employees and workers. The generation of new skills with AI will call for new job roles and those who will navigate to the right destination during such transformations will rule.

By Abhishek Agarwal, Senior Vice President, The Judge Group India