Future of talent in an era of AI
can you guys hear me
okay awesome um so yeah speaking about
how
data impacts human emotions uh two
things i learned today i don’t have the
inspiration like our
first speaker i don’t have the charm
like our previous speaker
but yeah i’m here to talk to you guys
about
something that i feel is going to impact
the way not just what we’re doing or
or how we’re living today but some
things are really gonna
that’s something that’s gonna drive the
future of the way we just operate and
the way we just exist
i’m gonna talk about the impact of
artificial intelligence on the future of
talent
i think it’s a topic that is very
pressing it’s something that
is going to impact the way we just get
into the job market and perform our
tasks so it’s something that
is really crucial to the way we start
forming our thought processes around
this
artificial intelligence for those of you
who don’t know is
one of the drivers of the fourth
industrial revolution
which means that it’s going to impact
every single process
every single um product every single
function that we know as mankind today
um
i want to take a walk down memory lane
to tell you guys
my first interaction with technology my
first interaction with
robots and how that sort of shaped me to
sort of start loving
technology in many ways how many of you
guys watched this cartoon
awesome jetsons one of my favorite
cartoons as a kid
and i really thought that they had some
super cool stuff that that really
inspired me to love technology
so three things that i really took out
from that
cartoon show one is video phones right
so george jetson would sort of come
and do these or do these talks or or
he’d like
communicate with people through a video
phone i thought that was really cool
they also had a personal assistant
called rosie who would actually do the
cleaning
and the house work and stuff like that
another fascinating thing that i thought
and the third thing that he had was a
digital watch where
he could not just like have like a video
conversation with someone on it
but just the fact that you had a digital
screen on your wrist with something that
was really cool
but things that we thought that would
not really exist over a period of time
which is why they’re actually showing it
in the cartoon
is something that is a part of our
everyday lives today
and when i actually saw jetsons
i think i was probably maybe seven or
eight years old
um 10 15 years later you started seeing
these technologies in every days
in in our everyday lives and in
everyone’s hands right
uh everyone has a video phone that can
do skype facetime
uh pretty much anything you have robots
as assistants and you have digital
watches through which
you can also not only just check out
your your
heartbeat or or or have access to let’s
say
weather and stuff like that but you can
also make phone conversations which i
think is really cool
but in such a short span and a span of
time you can see how
everyday technology is actually
influenced by
things like machine learning and
artificial intelligence
so looking at stuff like this is where i
felt that technology was just our
friends
and not something out to replace us
however hollywood actually showed us
that
we’re always at a war with this new uh
information with this new piece of
technology with robots right
terminator showed that to us the age of
ultron and avengers actually showed that
to us
so we’re also constantly thought that
these guys are things that we have to
be in a battle with you know in an
everyday scenario
so taking a vote of people in this room
how many of you guys feel that
artificial intelligence is actually good
very cool so good to see a lot of
like-minded people
and how many of you guys think that
artificial intelligence is bad that
technology is going to like
just eat all of us up
okay so good that we have ai optimus and
not
ai pessimists um but in many
in many talks that i’ve actually given
on this topic the crowd is more or less
split right some people actually feel
that artificial intelligence
is out there uh to sort of get after
what we’re sort of doing and replace us
in many ways
in fact scientific community and
academia at large
is also conflicted with this thought
where you have like guys like bill gates
and zuckerberg on the one hand who feel
that
ai is super cool and it’s gonna really
transform and change life
and on the other hand you have guys like
elon musk who actually feel that
uh artificial intelligence is gonna
replace us
okay so talk about technology failing
when you needed to
okay
so zuckerberg one of the greatest ai
optimists he feels that if you’re
against artificial intelligence and if
you’re against technology
you’re actually against the essence of
mankind so you’re against
uh smarter let’s say gadgets you’re
against
uh solving viruses like coronavirus
through technology or against the
essence of humanity
and then you have guys like musk um
okay i just guess that technology is
failing us today
okay and you have guys like must who
actually think that technology is gonna
is really gonna get out of our uh get us
out of our comfort zones and get us out
of the jobs that we’re doing today
um but whenever i sort of look at this
debate right i’m taken back to the
industrial revolution
where there were many people who
actually thought that
these machines are actually going to
replace human endeavor and we’re going
to be useless and redundant
so this is one of the photos that
actually was the first
organized revolt against industrial
revolution it’s very funny because it
happened 100 years after industrial
revolution actually started
where you had guys in new york actually
trying to
create and organize labor against um
against guys from putting machines in
factories
i think you’re gonna have to just like
do this for me
great but when you take a step back and
you look at the impact of industrial
revolution you’ll actually see that
technology
and mechanized ways of production had a
positive effect on human life
so you can see that life expectancy was
somewhere around 30 years of
people living to 30 years around the
1500s
and now that’s about like 75 to 80 years
you can see its impact on gdp as well
right so
not only did the productivity of the
world sort of increase rapidly when
industrial revolution started being
adopted
but you also saw that countries like the
west that were the proponents of
industrial revolution actually grew a
lot
faster than the rest of the world there
was sort of laggards in adopting
new technology and new processes
let me come back to the topic of today
right is
is artificial intelligence really out
there to replace us
so mckinsey did a study recently on the
future of jobs
what that report actually revealed is
that less than five percent of
percent of the jobs um have tasks that
are actually hundred percent automatable
if you look at the stat in a way it’s
good makes us feel that
that we we’re still going to be required
however that same report had another
very shocking statistic what it said is
that 60
of the jobs of of today and the future
are actually going to have one third of
them that is going to be replaced by
some form of technology
so essentially our jobs are safe
but the way we’re going to perform those
jobs is going to be very different
let’s summarize the discussion so far
including the fact that technology
failed
um ai is not necessarily good or bad
uh automation is spreading at a rate
that we cannot even imagine
technology i believe will augment human
effort is going to make a lot of what we
do
a lot better a lot more efficient and
we’re already seeing great signs of that
and there is still however a clear
societal impact of artificial
intelligence
coming to the workforce and and the way
people just
invest their time if you’re looking at
from when ai is adopted to
not sorry so when mechanized production
is actually adopted to now
what you sort of see is that there is a
lesser
um intensity of agriculture and a
greater
adoption of guys and services so what
that’s actually telling you is that
automation really displaced labor
uh from mechanized stuff that they would
do but is
now making us to actually think about
how we can actually apply ourselves
better
but low skilled labor is actually going
to impact or be impacted first
through new technology if i had to look
at a study of the american population
about 50 percent
of them were earlier employed in
agriculture
that statistic is actually down to less
than two percent today
now think about the impact of artificial
intelligence
into or or rather machine replacing
human effort in a country like india
right you’re going to have
wide scale um just because of the fact
that the lowest
form of labor is going to be replaced by
technology you’re going to have a huge
gap in in income you’re going to have
more rich you’re going to have
more poor and that gap between them is
just going to keep increasing
that is actually going to cause a lot of
societal tension you’re going to have a
greater socio-economic divide
and that is going to create a lot of
people wanting to revolt the guys
who actually have a lot of things gifted
to them on the plate right so that’s
going to create
like a strain on the national on the on
the nation’s fabric
starting a report from dell eighty-five
percent of the jobs of tomorrow
don’t even exist today which means that
we don’t even know what we’re going to
head out into
but one thing is actually clear right so
there’s not going to be a shortage of
jobs
but it’s going to be a shortage of
skills required to perform those jobs
which actually makes us wonder what are
we doing in institutions like this right
how relevant is what we’re studying
today when we sort of enter the job
market of tomorrow
so i’m a non-technical student in the
sense that i never actually studied
computer engineering but i lead a data
sciences team
because i’m able to i have a grounding
in statistics that sort of enables me to
understand how to look at problems
differently
but when i was in college and when i was
in school right things like artificial
intelligence and machine learning
weren’t even heard of
um i read another statistics from the
world economic forum that actually said
that 50
of the knowledge that you are taught in
a first year
engineering degree is actually going to
be redundant by the time you’re done
with that program
which is actually a very startling fact
because then you sort of question
the relevance of the stuff that you’re
actually taught in classrooms today
now if we are feeling this ourselves
right think about those who don’t even
know
what artificial intelligence is like our
drivers our cooks
uh our support staff they don’t even
know technology the way we do
so if you are going to create products
and
and technology that’s actually going to
replace them they don’t even know it’s
going to be headed
and now as you go further down the value
chain you’re going to find that this is
actually going to become
a huge problem in a developing country
especially like ours
having said that i feel i am an ai
optimist i feel that there’s a lot that
we can do with technology
just the fact that uh translation
solving diseases things like that are
actually being enhanced by technology
means that humanity is not actually
doomed not actually headed
um for a doomsday per se but you’re
still going to require the human to
govern that technology you’re going to
require
a guy to operate that robot to see that
robot is actually
doing the right thing or not so in many
ways i am an ai optimist
uh vibes like this from the government
and and programs that they create
this one is by the niti ayog actually
shows that there is thinking in that
direction
the lesser fortunate part of society is
actually being looked at
so i’m quite positive about the future
however when it comes to skills
that we require right i don’t think it’s
the theory of what we study in a
classroom that actually holds us in good
stead
but i feel that it’s skills that will
actually keep us in a good place in the
workforce and i don’t think
there is going to be technology that’s
actually going to replace that part of
it
um one is adaptability that you should
be able to
thrive in any situation that you’re
thrown in and that’s a skill that’s
going to
really be tested as we go into the
future
the next thing is devising a broader
outlook you’ve got to be able to step
outside a problem and look at it from a
holistic point of view
and i think that thought process is just
going to be enabling you to sort of come
up with solutions that you couldn’t have
even thought of before
you have to constantly be hungry for
knowledge right
be it nutrition or acting or theater or
whatever it is there’s always something
to learn there’s always something new
that i didn’t know today
heck i feel that i learned so much more
just sitting through two talks today
right so
i feel that you have to constantly be
wanting to learn and wanting to grasp
new knowledge
that is a skill that i feel that you’re
not going to be replaced by technology
with it
and be a team player you have to know
how to work not just harmonize your
efforts with people but now with robots
you’ve got to find a way how to make
technology
actually be working in a direction you
wanted to rather than being overwhelmed
by it
these are skills that i feel that are
really cool however when we look at
education systems like the world’s
best in finland there are three more
skills that they actually talk about
the first one being critical thinking
that you should be able to evaluate
problems and come up with solutions
uh at a very rapid rate the next is
communication if we’re not able to
understand each other if we’re not able
to understand situations
we’ll never be able to solve a problem
together and the last thing is
creativity
you’ve got to constantly be innovative
in the solutions you come up with
and you’ve constantly got to adapt
yourself i feel that if we possess these
skills
there’s no replacing us and the world is
not doomed after all
thank you