CAN WE DOWNLOAD TOMORROW, TODAY?: Dr. RAJAN GUPTA

Ludhiana, September 25, 2018: How would accelerated pace of change impact us? What would be the new workplace? How would the humans compete with machines and robots at the terms decided by the latter? These were some of the questions posed by Dr. Rajan Gupta, Research Professor at University of New Mexico, USA from the Ludhiana Management Association-LMA members during a Seminar, Future of Industry, Jobs & Workforce. Gupta shared his vision about the future of Business World and the challenges that would need to be handled in the backdrop of frantic innovation in the domains of Artificial Intelligence-AI, Robotics and higher learning. Dr. Gupta advised the members to introspect and seek answers to questions about the relevance of current business knowledge, practices and skills in the future envisioned and crafted by Robots.

Gupta maintained that the industry of tomorrow, would need to factor, the immense advantage enjoyed by Robots in doing most work with remarkable effectiveness, resulting in reduced costs and zero defect quality. Gupta asserted that failure to recognise this reality would only make a business vulnerable to forces of competition leading to failure. The answers to tomorrow lied in relentless innovation and their diffusion by the businesses. Shifting focus to the future scenario in terms of jobs he said, “It is not only the routine jobs that are threatened, but rather all jobs are at a risk, as the impact of new age technologies would be all encompassing, and only those who continuously upgrade, up skill and innovate will thrive.” He advised the audience to explore the latest advances in AI , understand their likely impact on their work, upgrade and be prepared for the challenges of tomorrow. While earlier the machines and computers were tools for effectiveness, in the emerging world order, humans will have to compete with the Machines, as the power of decision making would shift to Machines, necessitating a continuous upgrade of human skills to match the pace of AI driven disruption.

Gupta invited the audience to reflect on these developments and think, “Whether these changes will create enough jobs, and if not, what could be its impact on the workforce, especially for the developing countries like India?” Challenges facing humanity were that, the world would need a much smaller workforce to handle the current quantum of work, so how would the surpluses be taken care of or engaged. He asserted that the governments should proactively address these issues, and a failure do so would lead to world full of strife and also cause considerable stress to those, who are not the beneficiaries from the forces of innovation. Gupta exhorted the LMA members to continuously introspect, question and prepare for the forces of change that are exciting, challenging yet highly disruptive. President Kamal Wadhera appreciated Dr. Rajan Gupta’s views, his understanding of tomorrow, and his initiative for sharing his concerns with the members. Sr. Vice President Dr. Sandeep Kapur proposed the Vote of Thanks. Dr. Rajan Gupta was felicitated by Dr. Paramjit Kaur, Mr. D.R. Bhatti and Dr. A.P.S . Mann.