KOCHI: Artificial Intelligence(AI) may substitute certain jobs, but it will also generate new ones, MP Shashi Tharoor said on Saturday. He was sharing his insights during a seminar on the ‘Future of Jobs in the Times of AI’ organised by AIPC Ernakulam Chapter 2 in Kochi.
The question of how AI will impact jobs, especially in the context of India’s high unemployment rate over the past few years, remains unanswered.
“As per the report published by the Oxford Martin School, 30 per cent of the jobs in the world by 2030 will be jobs that don’t exist today. Now, that means you can’t train for these jobs cause the jobs don’t exist. So you don’t know what kind of skills are required. But if you are willing to adapt yourself and if you learn the habits that are required to deal with unfamiliar issues, there will be new jobs coming on stream that you never imagined,” Tharoor said.
He raised the question of how to ensure that AI serves humanity rather than replacing it. He acknowledged that predicting the course of technological advancements is difficult, citing the ubiquity of mobile phones and internet access as examples that were unforeseen in 1990.
“I still feel that particularly in our culture, the human touch will still be required. And I’m no techno-determinist. I’m not one of those who said that technology is always going to prevail. To give you an example, I was in the Ministry of Education as a minister when the whole wave of enthusiasm for massive online courses and video instruction had taken off,” he added.