Page 49 - Banking Finance October 2023

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AI can free up people for productive

jobs

G lobal technology leaders said Artificial million smartphone and internet users, India presents a
massive opportunity to be at the forefront of AI.
Intelligence (AI) can enhance productivity while
they urged for the development of AI in a
Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said digital
responsible manner.
least a decade and now it's time to talk about AI transition.
Speaking at B20 Summit India 2023 organised by CII, IBM transformation has been a theme around the world for at
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna said AI He said India and many countries in Global South have
can free up people for more productive work and reduce problems providing access to services to their people.
cost for businesses.
"An estimated 300 million lack access to services like
He said coding can be improved by about 60 per cent by healthcare, education and sometime ago for banking. On
using AI assistance. the other hand we have a lot of people looking for jobs.

"Inside IBM, we think about 20 per cent of the total activity, There are 10-12 million people coming to the workforce
which we call lower order cognitive work, about 30 per cent every year. We need to solve both problems. The only way
of that can be easily made productive through AI. That frees to solve these problems is by adopting technology at scale
up more people to do more value adding work. It's not that that has never been done before," Chandrasekaran said.
there aren't jobs. If you have productivity then you can He said that in the last 10 years, India has put in digital
access way more clients. You can provide things at a lower infrastructure through which it has been able to deliver
cost point," Krishna said. service at scale with ease.

He said things like human resources, the higher level "We have got to figure out a way of embracing AI in such a
cognitive task like advising people on what kind of team is way that we can innovate faster and protect privacy,"
required, developing people etc are very much human- Chandrasekaran said.
centric work at present and for the foreseeable future. Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith said
"There are a bunch of activities under it, I call them more wherever he goes, people say that mistakes done in the case
mundane, could be automated but are hard to do so. of social media should not be repeated in AI development.
Whether it be about promoting people, whether it is about
"I think it's fair to say that everybody, not just the companies
assessing people, those can begin to be done by AI. In our that were involved in it, say the biggest social media sites,
case we are doing 90 per cent of that through AI," Krishna
perhaps became a little too euphoric about the good thing
said. that social media will bring to the world without thinking of
He said the actual invention of foundation models, large the risks as well," Smith said.
language models, and building together computer He said the Arab Spring saw one side of social media and it
infrastructure do need people with those incredible skills. was different at the time of the 2016 US Presidential election.

"We are happy to have them but we don't need everyone "We need to be excited about the opportunity but
else," Krishna said. thoughtful, perhaps even concerned about the downside and
Talking about India, Adobe, Chair and Chief Executive Officer we need to construct guard rails from the outset as industry,
Shantanu Narayen said with 46 per cent of the worldwide as company and as governments and countries," Smith said.
digital payments, billion people with Aadhaar card and 850 (Source: Business Standard)

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