AI may replace some jobs, employees need retraining, predict IT leaders

As artificial intelligence gains currency, leaders at top technology companies including Microsoft and IBM today said there is a need to create "new collar jobs" as innovations would replace some jobs and existing employees would need to be re-trained.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Artificial Intelligence (AI) is moving on the right ladder and highlighted its importance in reviving the sluggish global GDP growth. Confident that all concerns on it are being handled, he said, at a session on AI at a WEF session here that the world is also going to move from supervised state to "non-supervised" state. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said AI will replace some jobs, but most of us will be working with these systems.

She called for creating "new collar jobs" by imparting new skills to the existing workforce and hoped countries like India would see many youngsters joining a new data economy. According to Nadella, data today shows that the world GDP growth is not "something great" and that calls for the need for new innovations like AI being taken very seriously.

"We can choose whether AI replaces or augments humanity at work," Nadella said, adding that it is our responsibility to have AI augment human abilities.