Business World People Magazine - July-Aug 2025

In this issue

In academic circles, industry and HR conferences, the buzzword today is AI. The full import of the penetration of AI in our day-to-day life is still unfathomable, but there is no going back to how we worked in the winters of 2022, when ChatGPT took the world by storm. The world is today divided into two kinds of people – those who are riding the wave, pulling the bull by its horns, and the other category, who either feel handicapped in learning or adapting to any new technology, those who do not have access to new tools, or those who have the means but are stubbornly stuck in the past. Whatever the reason, it is today imperative that the industry and academia rethink learning and reskilling fast to cater to the new industry needs spawned by AI. As Krishna Kabra, India Head, Orange GCC, says, “The gap between what businesses need and what their workforce can deliver grows wider by the day. The traditional upskilling playbook — occasional training programmes, mandatory e-learning modules, and performance review- driven development plans — has become as outdated as the fax machine in an era of quantum computing.” Other questions also crop up – the concern over large numbers of employees getting unemployed, the ethics, especially the question of originality and creativity, and the losing sense of purpose for humanity.