As the $155-billion IT industry tries to reinvent itself through automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, its traditional appetite for jobs is decreasing by the day.Industry body Nasscom said in its annual review that while the industry grew at 8.6%, jobs grew only by 5% in the fiscal year 2016-17. “In the next 10 years, we don't think there will not be a white-collar job that will not be touched by artificial intelligence. In our estimate, around 12% of the jobs will go away due to the bot and automation.“He added that the remaining three quarters of the jobs will have to adopt bots as a tool.“But, it's going to be all okay. “This is making for a very frugal workforce, one which has the ability to be more broad-based in their skill sets,“ he said.Despite the worrying trends, it has been noted in the past that technology has created more jobs than it destroys. That is because of the way automation works in practice, explains David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

Source: Economic Times February 20, 2017 02:15 UTC