A race that many did not volunteer to participate in, but cannot afford to watch from the sidelines. It is ironical that AI, which is expected to ease business complexities, may end up exhausting employees being pushed to Upskill, Upgrade and Retrain.
The frenetic pace of AI adoption will probably extract its pound of flesh at some point, even if India Inc would rather talk about the productivity marvels of this new technology.
According to a study, ‘AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part,’ by Microsoft and LinkedIn , 75% of corporate India’s business leaders have refused to hire someone lacking in AI skills, out-scoring the global average of 66%.
“AI skills outweigh experience, with 80% of leaders in India preferring to hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills over a more experienced candidate without them,” noted the study released in May this year. And 91% of the leaders in India believe that their firms need to adopt AI, versus 75% globally.
To a global analyst or an investor, or a funder of startups, these statistics are comforting. They suggest that companies in India are surging ahead on technology adoption and that India’s demographic dividend of a youth bulge is paying off in terms of a quick embrace of AI.
But if you are a campus graduate trained in a specific area, you will have to learn how AI tools operate in that field and how to master them. If you are already employed and do not find your name on a list of employees picked for upskilling sessions by your employer, you may wonder whether you’ve been judged less suitable for it.
And if you are a hunting for a job and your experience lacks AI -related skills, you may find it harder to find employment. AI is fast changing prospects and hasn’t been discussed enough.
Although company representatives at panel discussions have assuaged fears of AI resulting in job losses as algorithms take over routine tasks, many top and higher-level executives are unsure of the impact of AI on modern workforces. So pacification is mostly futile.
A senior executive of a large internet firm recently said in a meeting that firms are laying out road-maps for the bulk of office work to be taken over by AI.
While many are confident that the complexity of their role and analytical skills mean their jobs will not be snatched away, AI is expected to get sophisticated enough for its shadow to fall even on better-paid jobs. The ‘co-pilot’ model, with AI playing the role of an assistant, is reassuring, but not entirely.
AI may impact genders differently. Women who have taken a career break may find large portions of their work expunged when they return to office. Women returning to a workforce after a break are easily accepted today, but the roles offered are often below their capabilities.
Catching up can be exhausting. And some workers being asked to adopt still-evolving AI tools say it’s a breathless experience. AI tools claim to be user-friendly, but are often found to be overhyped on that count.
In cases where processes cannot afford AI errors or any ‘hallucinations,’ ensuring work accuracy can be time consuming. AI-driven exhaustion could put women at a disadvantage.
That worry is accentuated by the fact that AI impacts all sectors and companies, regardless of type and size. According to media reports, AI is partly responsible for layoffs over the past year or so at companies like Google, Microsoft and Dropbox.
But today, even newly hatched businesses that do not employ large numbers must adapt to AI. Just this month, social media influencer Sharan Hegde, founder of The 1% Club, laid off 28 from his 200-member team because of “some mistakes” in hiring and the adoption of AI tools to shave costs.
It’s a sign of the times that online ads have been proliferating for training sessions on AI adoption for various tasks. An AI training industry has sprouted around IT-skilling centres.
Ameerpet in Hyderabad, which bustles with makeshift classrooms and IT professionals imparting lessons, now has billboards that scream about the latest AI courses, even though it’s unclear if paying for these will improve a candidate’s chances of being recruited.
“The advent of artificial intelligence casts a huge pall of uncertainty as to its impact on workers across all skill levels–low, semi and high,” the Economic Survey noted this year. This caution is based on the capacity of this new technology to throw spanners in the wheels of employment generation in a country that is short of jobs.
We also need to worry about where large-scale AI adoption may leave businesses. They may end up more efficient, but also find their human staff too over-stretched and exhausted to check if AI is getting it right. Unlike humans, AI tools don’t get burnt out. But can AI be trusted?
The author writes on workplaces and education at Mint.
