AI to create more jobs in near term than those it eliminates: Tamil Nadu IT Minister PTR

Tamil Nadu's Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan speaks on AI creating more jobs than it eliminates, and the need for collaboration among stakeholders.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the near term will create more jobs than what it would eliminate, Tamil Nadu’s Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan said, in Hyderabad, on December 20.

“For the foreseeable future, next generation... AI will create more work than it would eliminate because we are so far removed from the kinds of datasets [required],” he said, addressing a conference organised by ICT Academy.

Also read: Creating 25,000 jobs per month in the IT sector must be our goal, says Palanivel Thiaga Rajan

Seeking to highlight how conversion of physical records into digital records, a pre-requisite to power search engines and consequently empower AI users, was progressing slowly, the Minister said “advent of AI will actually require more people doing different things than we have had in the past.” “AI, however, will change the nature of work,” he added.

Mr. Thiaga Rajan, who spoke at the inaugural session of the well-attended industry-institute event, underscored the need for collaboration among the stakeholders to ensure a steady stream of industry ready candidates. Stating that India is on cusp of becoming the human resource capital of the world, “a powerhouse of the labour market globally for the next generation”, he said this is bound to augur well for the country in many ways, including giving it a chance to replicate the couple of decades of China’s 10% growth.

“But, we have some structural problems. The first is the high level of information inefficiency in the market. Tens of thousands of graduates coming out are not able to find work [even as] there is a real shortage of skilled labour in many industries, including the tech industry,” he said, calling for an efficient interface among the stakeholders such as policy-makers, industry and educational institutions to remove the inefficiency, bring in transparency and improve outcome.

Appreciating the work of ICT Academy, the Minister said all stakeholders must help fine tune the strategy. “We need to have a dynamic, fluid adaptation of where the demand is and where the supply should be shaped... in a global economy the single variable that determines quality of life is the weighted average productivity of the citizen pool,” he said.