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When a robot takes your job

The biggest risk to human jobs today is robots, but there ways to tackle it such as rising up the value chain

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When Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka addressed a press conference last month to speak about the dispute with the company founders, what mostly seemed to trouble him was the number of jobs Indian IT giants will lose to automation.

He said India needs to move from the kind of jobs it has towards the reality-- automation-- and the need of the hour was to become more productive and innovative to go higher in the value chain.

Calling automation "product that will drive the future" Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the Infosys co-founders, told DNA Money he is optimistic about services like tourism and healthcare.

"Jobs – particularly in the IT field -- are only going to be more sophisticated here on as automation will be embedded in almost everything we would use," he said.

Say in healthcare or medicine, the way to address the change would be to move away from being just a normal physician and instead set up a clinic which is staffed by tech-savvy users with medical proficiency. "While a driver's job would be eliminated with the advent of driverless cars, but there will be a strong demand for people who build these vehicles or write the software," he said.

He is of the view that automation is an opportunity, given we invest time and money in the services and products for the future.

What about those who do not belong to the IT sector?

Technology requires people who understand human-machine interaction. There is science, but there is art, too. It needs people who can understand the softer, usability and design aspects of technology.

As rightly said, art can be created by machines but can't be appreciated. More developed a country, more people can go into arts rather than science.

Backing him, Nasscom president R Chandrasekhar said IT jobs are one of the highest paid and changing fast. "This transformation does not only require knowledge of technology but also the domain -- be it in agriculture, arts or sciences -- to understand the kind of changes – business dynamics, organisational structure, people's behaviour, cultural changes -- all of which involves very different discipline."

The trend is so prominent that two --Mad Street Den and Mihup Communications--out of the only three entities that made into Bloomberg's list of 50 Most Promising Startups belong to the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

Neerav Parekh, founder & CEO, vPhrase, believes that one just needs to adapt the technology and make oneself more productive. "It is just a matter of upgrading skills, and you can well cope up with and better compete with the automation around you," he said.

vPhrase, is an AI-based data analytics platform that helps businesses make their reports easier to comprehend.

From handicrafts to manufacturing driven by machines, automation has always been a part of human civilisation. Hence, rather than revolution, evolution is the right term, said Ajay Ramasubramaniam, director, Zone Startups India. From cash to ATMs to cards to e-wallets, technology has constantly been overhauling the micro-spaces of human life, he said.

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