View: Artificial Intelligence for inclusive growth

View: Artificial Intelligence for inclusive growth

• By Staff Writer

View: Artificial Intelligence for inclusive growth

The use of automation was one of the trends that were accelerated by the pandemic. The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not limited to businesses, but economies have also turned their focus on building up their AI capabilities as a means to augment growth. Developed economies like the US, China and EU countries are already in the race. Now, India too is set to join them. In the last couple of years, the Government of India established a Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and mandated the NITI Aayog to prepare a National strategy on AI with a view to leverage AI for inclusive growth. However, AI adoption remained at a nascent stage in India. India's first Artificial Intelligence summit, Responsible AI for Social Empowerment (RAISE) 2020 has turned the possibility of AI adoption into an imminent reality.

Amidst the accelerated adoption of AI-based technologies, India seems to stand at the precipice of the fourth industrial revolution. The competitive advantage of low-cost labour may fade away in the near future as economies begin to reap the benefits of AI in the form of increased productivity and cost advantages, and become more profitable than labour. Hence, it would be a timely move for India to build its AI capabilities, lest the global digital divide widens even more and we are left behind.

The report titled “Rewire for Growth” by Accenture estimates that AI has the potential to add $957 billion to India’s economy in 2035. As the post-Covid economy begins to rebuild itself, AI will present an opportunity to leapfrog by opening up newer sources of value and growth, beyond the physical limitations of capital and labour. However, AI elicits excitement and apprehension in equal measures. As much as AI and machine learning (ML) hold immense possibilities for the future of economy, there  are a number of issues and apprehensions surrounding it, and one of them is job displacement and by extension, unequal growth.

The skill-biased technological changes in the past have been assumed to be the cause for rising wage inequality. Contrary to this assumption, technological advancements have proven to be beneficial for everyone in the long-run. Since the first industrial revolution and up to the advancement in the information technology now, the world has only stood to gain more. AI is only one of the many phenomena that have disrupted economies and the way we work. according to experts, AI, like any other new technology in the past, will create more jobs than it destroys. Since we look at employment from the narrow confines of existing jobs, it limits our understanding of the extent of impact that AI can have in generating employment.