AI is not taking away your job; it is creating more jobs than it is taking away; you need to look at the positive side and go with the flow. You will come across a lot of these advice across the internet. You can consume the information, talk about it with friends and eventually stay blindsighted to the changes that have actually been taking place for the last twenty years. Artificial Intelligence has already wiped out 25% of the sales jobs across Europe and America in a span of eight years. A lot of these people rendered unemployed by automation have found other careers, and some have not. While you should not panic about intelligent automation and its impact, not preparing for it would be a careless move, bordering on stupidity.

The power of AI

Artificial intelligence is great at following sets of rules. Any task that is rule based can potentially be automated. 3.5 million people across Europe and the United States of America work as drivers. Their jobs are threatened by the rigorous research in the field of self driving automobiles. Thousands of loco pilots across the world have already lost their jobs to automation. Millions of drivers will eventually lose their jobs. You cannot really complain about it because this whole field of research aims at one thing and one thing only, that is freeing up human labourers from tasks that are repetitive and require minimal decision making. On top of that, with the help of deep learning, we now have machines that can handle a bit of decision making as well.

What empowers AI

The fuel that runs any AI based system is data. The machines are trained with data that comes in many forms – structured, unstructured, and semi-structured. Machine learning algorithms are trained with data to recognize patterns in the data, study it and present results. If we take the example of a chat bot, it starts working with a substantial repertoire of conversational knowledge but it is committed towards reinforcement learning. It learns what works and what does not as it keeps talking with the customers. All of this is possible only through the well navigated use of data.

How the jobs are affected

We all know how machines have replaced human workers in the assembly line. But even fifteen years ago we did not have the slightest clue that the job roles in sales, and BPOs can be threatened by automation. Those were just too human to be mechanized. But things have gone down differently.

I heard this story of two friends James and Kunal. Both started working as sales people in 2009. Both were hard-working personnel. Now, by 2012 James noticed that less customers were asking him about the products, they knew what to get and he was just lodging their orders. He was not worried about it. As the years went by, the number of people who knew exactly what they wanted kept increasing. Kunal noticed the same thing and saw some red flags. He worked more on customer engagement and increased his knowledge about the products. He worked on his interpersonal skills, and slowly became a sales consultant. In 2019, James lost his job because the company could automate the role of an order taker. Kunal kept his job as he had earned skills that made him indispensable.

The vulnerable sectors

As I have already said, companies will eventually automate whatever they can. So, any job that is repetitive, based on certain well defined rules, and needs minimal decision making is at risk. If you think about it, a few years ago we needed to hire a company or an engineer to design even a basic website template. Now, you can just buy a template for a nominal price and put your content on it with ease. Hence, you cannot really say that the technical workforce is out of automation’s way. They are very much in the middle of it.

What you can do to beat it

If you are in India you know where the heart of technological innovations is located. Enroll for machine learning training in Bangalore. If you are in a creative position, focus on the creativity. Build your unique style. Whatever position you are in work on your interpersonal skills. It is something machines cannot emulate in near future. You need to become valuable, not just efficient. Machines can beat you at efficiency at any given point, but when it comes to creative thought, innovative ideas, interpersonal communication, the game is on.