The Gold Rush

The Artificial Intelligence is modelled around working of the human learning and conditioning. With AI, computers are now getting smarter compared to the linear programming era. They are capable of undertaking complicated stuffs like making sense of disease-data to find cure, predictive alerts in public services and emergency, automating repetitive human-jobs like customer services or replacing part of work that lawyers or radiologists do. The list goes on.   

This is an era where machines are guzzling terabytes of data and learning things by themselves. The AI-led automation will eventually transform the world. This wave of AI-led automation has net benefits to offer - new innovations, new business models and solving inexplicable problems. It will, however, transform the world with new skill sets and job creation. It is the need of the new economy. It will create new jobs. According to Gartner, this number will run in millions. Bad news, however, is that most of these jobs are nothing that we have grown up knowing, or seeing all around us.

Is India prepared to harness the power of AI? The answer is negative. Neither our education infrastructure nor our start-ups initiatives are competitive enough. In fact, the real threat is massive job loss by AI-led automation and robotics. However, it will be more cost-efficient to hire a robot or deploy a chatbot that works on cloud than hiring an English speaking Indian graduate for a call-centre job.  

What India needs is a complete revamp of its education system. A shift towards embracing futuristic skill-based vocational education is a must. Policies must inculcate the culture of start-ups to foster innovation. Unfortunately India spends just about 0.8 per cent of GDP on overall research.  

The AI is here to stay. At first it would appear scary because it would make traditional skill redundant. But it is an opportunity for a resourceful country like India if its people accept the inevitable as early as possible and make compatible changes in existing institutions and practices

—The writer is the co-founder & CEO at jubi.ai that specialises in AI and chatbot projects