ADVERTORIAL AND PROMOTIONAL FEATURE— Colin Angle, co-founder, iRobot

Wednesday May 9, 2018 | Mumbai

The real question is, whenwill we draft an artificialintelligence bill of rights?

— Gray Scott, techno-philosopher

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It will be interesting to seehow society deals with AI,it will definitely be cool

With internetenabling oursocieties to dothings instant-ly, there is also

a need for a new system ofeducation, tailored exclusi-vely to millennials. “Imagineyour grandparents watchingyou graduate live while sit-ting halfway across theworld,” says Nitish Jain, pre-sident of SP Jain School ofGlobal Management that hasbeen preparing students forvalue-added jobs.

So, it begs the question:How does one get a value-ad-ded job? “One needs to under-stand what the talent require-ments of the world’s most ad-mired companies are. Theylook for graduates who canoperate in the fast-changingworld and a key requirementis adaptability. Consider thatclass participation is now onan app! The environment issuch that it unshackles stu-dents from conventional lear-ning ways,” adds Jain.

This, technology and arti-ficial intelligance were thetopics of debate at the annualHR Conclave of the SP JainSchool of Global Manage-ment in Mumbai on May 4.The event saw the best brainsfrom the human resource(HR) industry exchangingnotes and mentoring youngprofessionals.

Much of the discussioncentred on the growing emer-gence of artificial intelligen-ce (AI) at workplace. The ma-rathon sessions included twoengrossing panel discus-sions, one on ‘The Future ofDigital Enterprises’ and theother ‘The HR Imperative-—Integrating Human and

Technology Environment’.The first was moderated

by Dr Pramod Sadarjoshi, se-nior director of HCM strate-gy and transformation,APAC Oracle India. He beganby asking what disruptive di-gital changes organizationswill need to negotiate in thenext decade.

Panelist Dr Debashis Gu-ha, professor and director ofmachine learning at the SPJain School of Global Mana-gement, replied by placingthe question within a largercontext. “Both AI and machi-ne learning are general pur-pose technologies, which me-ans they affect not just onesector but everything” saidGuha. He also added “scienceadvances funeral by funeral” ,meaning that those who resistnew ideas get overruled. Heexplained how electricityeventually came to dominatethe manufacturing world but

the old guard was initially un-willing to embrace it. “Peoplefind it difficult to imagine so-mething new... People’s cogni-tive power actually limits thepace of change.”

Other panelists wereMadhavi Lall, MD and HR he-ad, India, at Deutsche Bank,Sandeep Batra, SVP and chi-ef talent officer at Vodafone,and Sahil Nayar, associate di-rector of HR at KPMG. WhileLall talked about the hugechanges in banking—brickand mortar bank branchesare slowly becoming redun-dant and robots are playing agreater role in customer in-teractions—Batra explainedhow AI had streamlined Vo-dafone’s recruiting process.

Empathy also found itsway into this discussion onAI. Nayar, for instance, spokeabout “design thinking”,which he described as “em-pathizing with users to un-

HR director, IMEA and headHR for Snacks BU, Asia, Ge-neral Mills; and Emrana She-ikh, vice president, HR, atAsian Paints.

Moderator Dr Christop-her Abraham, CEO and headof SP Jain’s Dubai Campus,asked panelists about the va-rious changes (“disruptions”in HR jargon) that AI wasbringing in, the skills requi-red to adapt and what HR ma-nagers could do to help theirworkforce.

Mulla said, “As I see fromthe audience questions here,HR professionals are wonde-ring if they can cope. It is bestto ask how to ride the wave rat-her than (fear you will) be sub-merged by it.” Her firm had in-terviewed people to be “changecoaches” two years ago, andwas intrigued to find that themotivators themselves had alow tolerance to ambiguity.

Poddar struck a reassu-ring tone saying humans hadadapted to the floppy disk andpen drive, and AI was just thenext step. “Let us call it trans-formation or climate changerather than disruption whichreinforces fear,” she said.

Ahluwalia said HR wouldsoon engage with a blendedworkforce involving not justregular staffers but thoseworking from home, indeedbots and robots. “You will ha-ve real-virtual, part time-fulltime and bots-people,” he sa-id. “I would recommend theadage ‘Physician, heal thy-self ’. Organisations mustadopt AI and embrace digitalcapability before they earnthe right to drive change.”

Sheikh cited the exampleof Asian Paints’ elderly, un-lettered workforce in An-kleshwar that proudly sho-wed off its new skills at auto-mation through cellphones.They were happy they couldnow do what their grandkidsdid. By contrast, youngertech-savvy staff in Rohtakwere more sure and took thenew programme for granted.

derstand their pain points”.And all the panelists addres-sed the issue of ensuring thatdigital technology and AI donot dehumanize workspacesfor employees. “People arescared because the rate ofchange is too quick,” saidLall. “As human resourcestaff, we have got to under-stand the concern that peoplehave and help them cope withambiguity.”

The second discussionwas a brisk, a rapid-fire Q&Athat focussed on integratingthe human and technologicalenvironment. It featuredGaurav Ahluwalia, mana-ging director, HR, JP MorganChase; Kirti Poddar, head, ta-lent acquisition and executi-ve VP, India and APAC of Kel-logg India; Tanaz Mulla, he-ad, corporate HR, chief et-hics counsellor andchairperson of POSH TrentLimited; Ashutosh Phadke,

‘Those WhoResist New Ideas

Get Overruled’

HR brains debate artificial intelligence at workplacePics: Uma Kadam

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Mumbai: The chief of a ma-nagement consulting firm so-ught to allay doubts surroun-ding the use of artificial intel-ligence (AI) at workplace. Inhis keynote address, SandeepChaudhary, CEO of Aon Con-sulting, said that AI does notresult in people becomingunemployed, it just makescertain tasks redundant.

Earlier, Dr Rajashree Guja-rathi, director of academic ser-vices, executive MBA, at the SPJain School of Global Manage-ment, Mumbai, had remarkedhow companies like Kodak andNokia which were once topbrands of their product catego-ries had slumped into decline.

Chaudhary pointed out,“These firms may have comeupon bad times but their emp-loyees would surely have fo-und jobs elsewhere. At one ti-me, if a man sought a licenceas a taxi driver he was expec-ted to know every road, everylandmark in the city. Not sonow. He has gadgets and tech-nology to help out.”

Chaudhary added, “10 ye-ars ago, if somebody claimedwe would have driverless, fu-el-free cars or that life expec-tancy would rise by 25% orthat we could grow food in ver-tical farms that use 99% lessland and 90% less water, wo-uld any of us have believed it?The use of AI and content onour planet is growing so expo-nentially it seems to be thestuff of science fiction.”

He made frequent referen-ces to the ‘Terminator’ franchi-se whose theme details the batt-le for survival between a belea-guered human race and AI em-bodied as Skynet. “So will AIreplace humans? The answer isno. When IBM introduced com-puters, it expected that all offi-ces would turn paperless. Butuse of paper has only grown.”

‘AI does notmean people

will startlosing jobs

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: At the HR Concla-ve, Christopher Abraham,CEO and Dubai campus headof the SP Jain School of Glo-bal Management, presentedthe findings of a large-scaleindustry survey of HR pro-fessionals across SP Jain’scampus locations in Dubai,Singapore, Sydney andMumbai. The survey had re-spondents from various in-dustries including IT(15.63%), consulting (14.58%),retail (12.50%), manufactu-ring and supply chain (11%),pharma or bio tech (9%), lo-gistics (7.29%) and hospitali-ty (4.17%).

When it came to digitaland technology transforma-tion, 67% of organizationsrated it as a high or very highpriority and 53% rated theHR challenge of adoptingnew technologies as high.This makes sense when youconsider that 50% of indu-stries and 48% of organiza-tions report an increase inthe adoption of digital tech-nologies. In Mumbai, 63% re-ported an increased adoptionof digital technologies.

The impact of this digitalenterprise trend was appa-rent when 63% of industriesreported disruption due to di-gitization and automationand 62% reported a shortageof skills required for the digi-tal economy. According tomost respondents, the depart-ments that would be most im-pacted by digital technologieswould be IT, marketing and

customer service.Amid fears that artificial

intelligence and digital tech-nologies will cause people tolose their jobs, the surveyprovided a glimmer of hopewith 50% of respondents cla-iming that their projectedemployee headcount was hig-her than last year. This wasparticularly true for Mumbaiwhere 75% of organizationswere projecting a higheremployee headcount than2017. It also showed that thegeneral outlook in Mumbaiwas positive with 100% of or-ganizations anticipating anincrease in business perfor-mance compared to last year.

Abraham explained thatthe top skills for success inthis digital century would beinnovation, entrepreneurs-hip, emotional intelligence,and the ability to handlechange and ambiguity. “The-re is this huge hype about ar-tificial intelligence,” conclu-ded Abraham, “but let us re-member that it is still artifici-al and human ingenuity andwisdom far surpasses it.”

67% organizationsfeel tech adoptionis a high priority

RAPT ATTENTION

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

(Top) L-R Dr Rajashree Gujarathi of EMBA Mumbai, Gaurav Ahluwalia of JP Morgan Chase, Kirti Poddar of KelloggIndia, Ashutosh Phadke of General Mills, professor Christopher Abraham, CEO and head of SP Jain’s Dubai Campus,Tanaz Mulla of POSH Trent Limited, Emrana Sheikh of Asian Paints; (bottom left) L-R Dr Debashis Guha of SP JainGlobal, Madhavi Lall of Deutsche Bank, Dr Pramod Sadarjoshi of APAC Oracle India, Sandeep Batra of Vodafone andSahil Nayar of KPMG; (bottom right) Sandeep Chaudhary, CEO of Aon Consulting