Will Automation Steal Your Job? Not Likely, Assures A Major IT Company

The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has generated new roles in companies, according to findings of a Capgemini survey of nearly 1,000 organisations with revenues of more than $500 million. A majority of organizations (63 per cent) have not seen AI produce a negative effect on jobs, the survey said, adding that in the long run, technology creates more jobs than it destroys. Capgemini is a French IT and software provider with over 1 lakh employees in India.

The research, "Turning AI into concrete value: the successful implementers' toolkit," found that 83 per cent of companies have created new jobs as a result of the AI, with two in three jobs being created at the grade of manager or above.

Companies which had adopted AI technologies on a larger scale found that it will greatly increase human efficiency and make complex jobs easier, the report said. Eighty eight per cent of the companies surveyed also said that in future intelligent machines will co-exist with human workers.

"Artificial Intelligence automates some of the repetitive tasks of the engineer. Now those engineers can dedicate more time to tasks that require more creativity," said George Sarmonikas, AI Lead at Ericsson.

"What we really want to do is to use humans to the best of their capabilities," said Michael Natusch, Global Head of AI at Prudential.

However, as organizations look to explore the potential of AI, one of the biggest concerns employees have had is about its impact on jobs, the report warned. Also, nearly two-thirds of organizations (64 per cent) consider the lack of skills to be the biggest challenge to AI implementation.

"I do not think the world has enough people that know how to build AI. There is an extreme scarcity of talent right now," said Ashwini Ashokan, CEO and Co-founder Mad Street Den-a computer vision and Artificial Intelligence startup.