Will AI take my job? Adobe’s Vyshak Venugopalan and Microsoft’s Samik Roy on aftereffects of artificial intelligence

In a thought-provoking session titled ‘Being God with AI: One Command of Inspiration, Imagination and Innovation’ at the India Today Conclave 2024, Tech Today’s Aayush Ailawadi led an exploration into the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the workforce. The discussion featured insights from Vyshak Venugopalan, Director Solution Consulting at Adobe India, and Samik Roy, Executive Director for India & South Asia at Microsoft.

Reflecting on the perennial question of whether AI will displace human jobs, Samik Roy of Microsoft offered historical context: “This is an interesting discussion which comes out every single time there is an invention out there. You know, when the steam engine was invented, people said, oh my god, locomotion will take away jobs. After that, electricity got invented, the second industrial revolution, and people said, oh, all the manual processes are going to be now automated and jobs will go away. Then came computers, the internet, and people said, oh, now computers will take away all the jobs. But let's just step back."

Roy emphasised the importance of skilling and reskilling in adapting to the changing landscape brought about by AI: “What I would say is it needs skilling and reskilling. The good part of AI is that it reduces the learning curve a lot so people can learn faster. You know the difference between the previous era and this era is in the previous era we used computers and automation to bring information at your fingertips. That's what people try to do. They try to digitise places, they try to digitise people, they try to digitise data. In this era it is about expertise at your fingertips. So even a common person by using a lot of these AI-generated models can produce better results. So skilling will be very very important and redeployment."

Echoing similar sentiments, Vyshak Venugopalan from Adobe highlighted the potential of AI to democratize creativity while simultaneously raising the standards of professional work: “We also believe the same which is AI and the powerful child of AI which is generative AI will lower the floor so that more people can enter. It will democratize creativity to a large extent. At the same time, it will also elevate the ceiling so that we all will be driven with the help of enablement and education. As Swami mentioned, the professionals will be elevated to actually uplevel the quality of work.”