GURUGRAM: Maintaining a positive outlook towards the advent of new technologies in the IT industry, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) president R Chandrashekhar said automation should be looked on as an opportunity and not as a challenge. Speaking at Nasscom's annual technology conference held in Gurgaon on Friday, Chandrashekhar said, "We've real-life examples of how digitisation and automation pose an opportunity and not a challenge for enterprises in India. Artificial intelligence and analytics can transform every aspect of business, from algorithm economy to intelligent talent management." Multiple organisations participated in the event and brainstormed around the theme'prepare to disrupt'. Chandrashekhar has repeatedly rubbished the claims of Indian IT industry losing jobs to technology.

HYDERABAD: As Saudi Arabia's decision to grant citizenship to a robot makes international headlines, a top official of the Indian IT industry body says it signifies that artificial intelligence (AI) has come of age. The AI is fast reaching a stage where many of the tasks performed by humans can be done by robots, Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar told. Riyadh's recent move to give citizenship to an AI humanoid robot is more of a "symbolic gesture" meant to draw the attention to the use of technology and willingness to give technology a free play, he said. "Obviously it (granting citizenship to a human robot, named Sophia) was not required; it's given more as a symbolic gesture," Chandrashekhar said, adding that, however, "there are lot of ethical questions which come up". He said: "But essentially, the grant of citizenship (to a bot) is only a sort of symbolic thing. I don't think we should read too much into it. "But I think it also signifies that AI has come of age and reached a level comparable to human beings in performance of many tasks." On the impact of AI on human jobs, he recalled that the advent of machines had a significant impact on how people performed physical labour and eventually they did away with some jobs. "But actually machines created many more jobs than they eliminated," Chandrashekhar said. Similarly, according to him, the advent of IT and software eliminated some jobs involving repetitive work but a large number of functions did not get impacted. But now with AI, the number of jobs and performance getting impacted has increased, he said. "In some way or the other, it impacts many if not most of the jobs that we see because AI is moving into the mental work space." He added: "But I think, again, while certain jobs are getting eliminated, certain other jobs get created and may be it will take a while for full range of new jobs to mature and for these (new job) numbers to expand (as a fall out of AI)." He noted that e-commerce, for example, eliminated a lot of retail jobs but a lot of courier jobs were created, while there is no doubt that jobs are getting eliminated, new category and kinds of jobs are being created. The kind of skills required for existing jobs are increasing dramatically. Taxi drivers have now been using GPS to find location, an increase in their skill level compared to the past, but once autonomous self-driven vehicles come, the "whole profession of drivers could get significantly reduced", he said. While such shifts influenced by technology are already taking place globally, what has changed is the pace at which it's happening. "In five years, there has been a dramatic change.

Reskilling is the buzzword in the IT sector. With the sector seeing huge churn due to automation and protectionism in the western markets, industry lobby group Nasscom's president R Chandrashekhar told employees in May: Re-skill or perish. The sector is seeing layoffs and voluntary severances. Companies' hiring is on the decline. One estimate even puts the likely job loss at a whopping 2 lakh over the next three years. And in that, the sector is class agnostic.

That's the size of the workforce dedicated to a business that's thrived for the past three decades on a growth model of labour arbitrage. In the process, it's matured into a industry worth almost $150 billion. The multi-billion dollar question today is, where does it go from here, as it comes head to head with a series of challenges. Consider: New Bills being introduced by the Trump administration in the US Congress seek to make outsourcing not only tougher but more expensive. This comes at a time when protectionist sentiments that call for onsite hiring of locals are spreading globally. All this, even as traditional IT services are moving towards the digital economy.

No need to panic, but automation and artificial intelligence may already be playing a role in reducing IT hiring in India. According to Nasscom, an Indian IT industry association, fresh hiring in the current financial year is expected to decline compared to last year as IT companies face stiff margins, and move more jobs to automation. Campus hiring may fall for the first time since 2009. "Hiring activity in the year before last was 2.20 lakh (new jobs were created in IT sector). Last year there were about two lakh additions. This financial year, we are expecting it to be on the lower side of that," Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said.