Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the fastest evolving general purpose technologies globally and is widely used across all the sectors mainly agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, banking and financial services. Apart from these, it is also used in national defence and security as well. With the adequate support and backing from the government, AI-led solutions have provided a green flag for their adoption and this grip boosted the innovators and organizations to develop machines and technology to assist the humankind. Smart agriculture, asset maintenance and chatbots are some of the cases that works with this successful human-machine interaction models.

AI Transforming the Job Setting in India  

In industrial practices, AI systems continue to disrupt their unique power at eliminating complex problems, but there is a huge concern in the employment–related issues. But according to the views of professionals, most of the industries are likely to be partially automated and the highest being in the manufacturing sector with 38 percent. Followed by finance sector at 31 percent and education, teaching and computer services/software records around 10 percent.

Industries nowadays enhance the workforce by recruiting the professionals with the right skills for understanding, building and implementing AI systems. It is found that in the manufacturing sector, 63 percent of the participants responsible for hiring have recruited the best people for job. However, for other sectors such as computer services/software, it is 42 percent, education and teaching with 39 percent and finance, banking, insurance and accounting at 27 percent.

According to the ‘Report of the Task Force on Artificial Intelligence’, AI can make certain forms of labour obsolete as it allows humans to get more involved in work that requires more knowledge, critical thinking and conscience. There will be a significant rise in jobs in data creation hubs (where the companies could employ people with primitive computer literacy to generate training materials for AI systems) and using advisory solutions compressing human expertise into machines (this improves the accessibility of expert advice to a large population across sectors like agriculture, rural healthcare and finance). Similarly in the other sectors, such as involvement of more healthcare professionals (AI can help physicians, radiologists, nurses to share their expertise in critical cases as normal routine cases will be attended by AI assistants), new roles within IT services (AI automation will create jobs such as research analysts, data entry operators, system engineers and test engineers. However, a large part of the workforce has to re-skill in AI and ML solutions in order to lessen the potential job losses.

How to Get Ready for the AI Revolution

When it comes to individuals, their primary duty is to keep themselves updated and relevant to the job always, by regularly adapting and evolving according to the changes in the organization and in the market. Sufficient time should be invested in acquiring knowledge and skills and should practice the phenomenon of learn, unlearn and relearn in the middle of their career.

Meanwhile, educational institutions should work with industries to offer the students that industry-experience. Along with that, a proper continuous skill improvement system should be implemented so that young minds can adapt themselves from early stage to transfer their skills as per the job landscape.

As far as businesses are concerned, on-job training will be very helpful and it would be the HR’s responsibility to create awareness about AI ecosystem and its functions to the employees. Moreover, businesses can use various technologies to address the challenges faced in different sectors. In order to stay competitive, every organization should work on their own strategy.

Similarly, government should start training the middle-skill order to balance between job availability and employee readiness. With providing basic computer literacy, they could take up jobs at the data creation hubs and assist in basic operation of AI-driven systems. Also, government should focus on strategic distribution of niche AI talent in the industries and universities with the help of academic research.

Overall, AI can definitely reshape the Indian workforce only if government, academia and the businesses work together to re-skill the world upcoming.