Don't make AI models but make the most of what exists

Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it was eliminating 4,000 management positions because artificial intelligence (Al) tools had rendered those middle-management roles redundant.

- RAHUL MATTHAN

Amazon isn’t the only one—Microsoft, Google and IBM have all announced AI-related layoffs. According to a 2023 report by Niti Aayog, 1.5 million Indian jobs in the IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) sectors alone are expected to be at high risk by 2031. McKinsey believes that as many as 69% of tasks in India’s IT services industry can already be automated with existing Al technology, suggesting that as many as 3-4 million jobs in the IT and BPO sectors could be at risk in the near to medium term.

Our instinctive response has been to try to catch up—to build Al capabilities so that we can replace the jobs being lost by upskilling displaced workers with the technology that displaced them. We have announced AI education initiatives, established new AI research centres and funded GPU clusters and data centres that we believe these newly trained engineers will be able to use for building Al applications.