As machines make deeper inroads into the workplace, tectonic shifts are taking place in the job market. The Future of Jobs report 2018 presented at the World Economic Forum identified some roles that are declining and others that are emerging.
The job roles losing the race to machines and algorithms include data entry clerks, assembly and factory workers, business services and administration managers, and stock-keeping clerks.
Jobs that are emerging include data analysts and scientists, AI and machine learning specialists, big data specialists, new tech specialists and organisation development experts. Between 2018 and 2022, 75 million current job roles are expected to be displaced by machines and algorithms, the report said. On the sunny side, 133 million new jobs are expected to emerge during the same period.
“Social, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) is table stakes. We are talking about distributed ledger, AI, 3D printing, mixed reality and other amazing new tech,” Vala Afshar, chief digital evangelist at Salesforce told TOI on the sidelines of the Nasscom India Technology Forum held in Mumbai recently.
Afshar described AI as the most profound tech that he has ever worked on. “Companies are appreciating the power of data. Data is the oil of the 21st century. But oil is just useless thick goop until you refine it into fuel. AI is your refinery,” said Afshar.
An Accenture report said that AI has the potential to add $957 billion to India’s economy by 2035. Accenture has 20,000 AI professionals and over 6,000 deep AI experts implementing 11,000 client engagements and filing over 600 patents in AI. Paul Daugherty, chief technology & innovation officer in the company, says the word `artificial’ in artificial intelligence is a misleading word. “It’s actually about taking the best human intelligence and combining it with machine intelligence and applying it to a business problem. So we call it applied intelligence,” Daugherty said.
On the robotic revolution, the WEF report said stationary robots would be the most widely adopted by 2022. This, it said, would be followed by non-humanoid land robots, and then humanoid robots, and aerial and underwater robots. The first adoption of stationary robots would be in automation, aerospace and supply chain. The oil and gas sector is expected to adopt aerial and underwater robots, while humanoid robots are expected first to be used in financial services.
Afshar, like his boss Marc Benioff, believes AI is a human right. “We are risking a new tech divide, between those who have access to AI and those who don’t. Those without AI are going to be weaker and poorer, less educated and sicker. We must ask ourselves, ‘Is this the kind of world we want to live in?’”
Afshar said Salesforce has hired a chief ethics officer to help understand what design needs to go into its products and services to ensure ethical use of AI. “Maintaining trust perhaps is the hardest and most rewarding thing a company can do,” he said.
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