Future of Work @ Huge Upskilling and Quality Higher Education for Middle Skilled Professional
Impact of artificial intelligence and automation, there is no doubt that advances in these areas will affect deep changes in our world.
As per the report suggest middle skills will more suffer as compared to low skills and high skills jobs, so there is a need of huge upskilling and quality higher education for middle skilled professional to cope up with this Robotic challenge.
More Insights available @ PR
Are we prepared for the future of work?
Rising to the challenge of new job demands requires skilling at all levels. Besides, who can tell what the future holds?
When we talk about the impact of artificial intelligence
and automation, there is no debate that advances in these areas will effect
profound changes in our world. Rather the debate centres around what these
changes might look like in the years to come. There are growing concerns, or
more specifically outright fears, amongst the working age population regarding
the effect of technologies like AI on jobs in future, and with good reason.
A recent study reported that the Indian IT industry alone
is expected to see a loss of 6.4 lakh jobs (low and medium-skilled) by 2020
owing to the technology revolution and automation. Moreover, around 46 per cent
of India’s population below 25 years of age can be seen entering the job market
with skills that will become obsolete at the time of their entry.
This excludes 40 per cent of those in the age group of
26-55 years who are already employed in occupations which may be outmoded soon.
Old fears
Apprehensions about job loss or displacement due to
automation and AI are not new. Let us go back to the time of the Luddite
movement. British textile workers in 1811 attacked and burned factories due to
fears of machine operators robbing them of their livelihood. With the advent of
personal computers and information technology in the 20th century many feared
they would be replaced by computers.
Today, as we stand on the edge of a technological
transformation which is evolving at an exponential speed, the same lookout
seems quite natural although despite these concerns and fears history has
demonstrated that every technological shift, while eliminating certain types of
jobs, has ultimately ended up creating more. Besides, at a broader level, these
technologies always have had the power to solve some of the great problems of
mankind. For instance, AI is already driving great advances in medicine and
healthcare with perfectly accurate diagnosis and far better disease prevention.
However, a word of cautionhere. Optimism about the future
of the world of work relies on two flimsy premises. First, what we have
witnessed in the past is most likely to be an accurate predictor of what we are
going to witness in the future; and second, we can withstand the accompanying painful
transition.
Pointing to past experiences as a response to fears
concerning automation and AI works well only when the future is guaranteed to
pan out similarly. There are strong reasons to believe that the future will
play out differently. This brings us to the second premise. Even if we presume
that jobs will be eliminated and there will be new jobs to replace them the
question is: What kind of jobs will be created and what will be done away with?
The skill factor
Reports suggest that anything that requires middle skills
will be made redundant first; low skilled and highly skilled jobs are
comparatively less vulnerable. Without massive upskilling and quality higher
education, it will not be possible for the middle skilled to move into jobs
requiring a high level of skill. Moving into less-skilled jobs makes no sense
either and therefore the transition will be painful. An economic scenario where
there is high unemployment consisting of individuals incapable of getting a job
simply because they do not possess the required skills can become a reality if
India doesn’t prepare adequately for the future of jobs.
The next logical question is: How do we prepare
ourselves? At the minimum level, by reinventing our higher education system and
by providing the means for people to re-skill themselves significantly. What
that means is that a shift to lifelong learning is essential. As the pace of
technological change quickens, we need to be sure that our youth keep up with
the right skills to thrive in the ever-changing world of work.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been voicing his
optimistic views on AI with respect to the road ahead. It is heartening to see
that our government is working towards supporting a technology-driven future.
The intent can also be traced in the budgetallocation for Digital India (the
amount has almost been doubled). However, shouldn’t more efforts be made to
strengthen the focus on how to mend our higher education ecosystem altogether?
After all, we don’t want our employees to compete with technology that can
disrupt almost every other industry. Instead, it would be more meaningful to
leverage synergetic complementarity between the two.
The writer is Chair, Institute for Competitiveness,
India. Bhawna Kakkar, researcher, Institute for Competitiveness, has
contributed to the article
Source | Business
Line | 16th March 2018
Regards
Prof. Pralhad Jadhav
Master of Library & Information Science (NET
Qualified)
Senior Manager @ Knowledge Repository
Khaitan & Co
Mobile @ 9665911593
No comments:
Post a Comment