No ifs or bots,learn to live with AI
AI — may not be as gloomy as it seems. India's tech industry is highly cyclical and should hope to spring back once Western central bankers start pulling back on interest rates. By redefining human-computer interaction, AI is expected to speed up the dispersal of technology across economic sectors.
Job seekers who were expected to double the headcount in India's IT industry by the end of the decade will face rising demand for their skills in a wider range of industries. The tech industry will be at the forefront of increasing productivity as machines take over routine coding. These productivity gains will also spill over to a broader range of sectors where India faces a skill disadvantage that it can cover up through AI.
India's white-collar employment can emerge from the tech silo if its colleges keep producing skilled graduates to add value through AI.
This will be the world's largest workforce implementing a highly disruptive tech. Gains to the economy would be considerable if it could position itself as the front office for the world by offering solutions to more business processes than it does now through ITeS. Services exports suitably diversified from coding puts white-collar job creation on a firmer footing.
New technologies, however, take time to produce economic dividends, and AI is unlikely to be an exception.
It will also, like its predecessors, lead to widespread labour displacement. Shrinking headcounts at the country's top IT companies should drive demand for AI and the talent needed to harness it. They should resume hiring from college campuses once the tech acquires critical mass and they run out of capacity for in-house reskilling.
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