A new study by Microsoft-IDC highlights how artificial intelligence (AI) can boost an organisation’s productivity and competitiveness. As per the study, companies that have already adopted AI are expected to increase their competitiveness by 2.3 times in 2021. The study was conducted in 15 Asia Pacific markets, including India; where only 1/3rd of the organizations have started implementing AI. The study showed that there were six critical variables for ensuring successful AI adoption for a nation, wherein, India’s AI journey will require investments, data and strategy. The business leaders surveyed have stated three major reasons that act as obstacles—lack of advanced analytics and tools to develop actionable insights, data management, and lack of leadership commitment for embarking on an AI journey. The study also mentioned that organisational culture needs to be revamped for adoption of AI and its understanding of it.
The study shows that Indian business leaders and workers—contrary to what the usual fears about the march of AI—are are optimistic; 63% of business leaders and 63% of workers believe that AI would be beneficial as it will improve their tasks and reduce the time taken for repetitive work. The fear of job loss does exist, but, in the 15 countries where the survey was conducted, only 4% workers thought that they would be replaced by AI. In the Indian context, understanding this optimism is not easy. In developing countries, especially, India, where a large chunk of the workforce has poor skills and does work that can be done more efficiently by a machine, is it wise to expect that large chunks of the labour force will get attuned to or employed in a technocratic work environment? It is important to note that with the adoption of AI, the government and private players will have to invest in skill development projects that are more oriented towards human intuition and empathy rather than towards a protocol/process that can be reduced to an algorithm. While optimism over AI in white-collar workplaces may seem justified, care must be taken to ensure that it doesn’t contribute to the growing unemployment in the nation.
