Artificial intelligence may kill 90 per cent jobs

Bengaluru: Wipro vice-president and CTO K.R. Sanjiv said on Thursday that automation can be a disaster in the making, if it was not planned properly.

Speaking at the 13th edition of CII India Innovation Summit 2017 here, he said automation has already hit the road and will kill 80 to 90 per cent of jobs.

He, however, said that there is a chance for developing different job opportunities and recreating the entire workforce. “We have to bite the bullet. There no slowdown in automation,” he added, while speaking on Rise of machines and future of human labour.

Automation and artificial intelligence have already started affecting India with the pace of job creation failing to match the economic growth rate.

According to Arati Deo, the MD of artificial intelligence at Accenture, even today there is more than 90% automation in some warehouses, with robots organising everything from picking to packing.

Companies in highly competitive sectors, like IT and automobile have already started using machines for performing the tasks that humans were doing.
She said there are three ways in which man and machines have currently been the working in a much better and smarter way.  

“First, the AI systems give the recommendations and humans make decisions based on those suggestions. In the second type, machines advise humans. The most efficient way of putting AI and machine learning into use is collaboration, wherein machines work for humans and they just control the systems.”

“That’s where I see the collaboration between man and machine going forward,” said Ms Deo. Agreeing with Ms Deo, Mr Sanjiv said that robots can do the same work as humans in a much smarter way.

However, as far as losing jobs to automation is concerned, the senior WTO official said, it is going to be the same scenario as computerisation in the banking sector.

Ms Deo, however, felt that the doomsday scenario wouldn’t happen overnight due to automation. “There is a shortage of people who can build training programmes to help people to transition from one job to another,” she said.