“What torments of grief you’ve endured from evils that never arrived,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century American philosopher and writer. Millions of workers are feeling similar. How many jobs will artificial intelligence destroy? And are we all worrying unnecessarily?
“The demand for human labor will not go away,” Mohit Joshi, the chief executive of the Indian information technology giant, Tech Mahindra, tells me. The world is entering an era of technology complexity and new business opportunities. The changes are likely to increase demand for ‘humans in the lead’, even though the job specifications will be radically different.
Joshi has data and historical precedent to back up his assertion. In the 1990s, many companies, spooked by the threat of the Millennium Bug, invested heavily in technology updates as a protective measure. The bug—linked to the New Year date change from the 20th century to the 21st—never materialized, leading to predictions that tech spending would fall back to 20th century levels. It went in the opposite direction and the ‘trend to spend’ continued.
“The demand for human labor will not go away.”
MOHIT JOSHI CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF TECH MAHINDRA
