I travel to Mumbai frequently for work, and with my phobia of hotel rooms, I am always on the lookout for a place to stay. It takes me back to the time when I first came to Mumbai and was hopping from PGs to hostels while trying to become a journalist. The thing is that when I stay with friends or at clubs, I meet many people whom I would never have met otherwise.

Recently, I have noticed a new kind of uncertainty and stress among working professionals over 45 years old who hold mid- to high-level positions. If they are in the IT sector, they are concerned about being replaced by an AI-based system that has rendered most of their managerial tasks redundant. And when even storied IT companies, which had a history of never firing people, adopt American principles of AI-driven layoffs, the stress level is shooting up in a segment of society.

Mhatre is one such IT professional; he is four years away from retirement at an IT company, having worked his entire life. An IT company that never laid off employees and consistently maintained a large bench of talent. He confided that he is scared, as his peers have been asked to go on short notice. His son is studying at a US college; he faces high expenses and dreads going to the office, as he feels he is the next target for the HR axe.

The underlying cause of Mhatre’s stress is not that he is no longer useful to his company, but the company is taking a system view of everything in terms of output and input costs. The automation of large projects is so advanced that a system he ironically helped build is now allowing even a young manager to manage prestigious large projects. His expertise was valued, rewarded, and appreciated. Now, it has been commoditised into an AI platform that is changing the way his company operates and, more importantly, how CXOs think about middle management. I have often referred to this layer as email managers; it demeans their human contribution and also reduces them to a non-entity. This is the human cost of an AI platform, which is slowing down the country’s largest employment engine.

In this environment, it is essential to read the Niti Aayog’s report on AI. The focus of the report is to achieve a GDP growth rate of 8 per cent. This focus on just GDP growth for a subject like AI is myopic, especially for a government think tank that prides itself on independence and holistic development. It seems to be justifying AI in the guise of GDP growth but not factoring in the loss of jobs and the resulting fall in GDP.

The report says that trillions of dollars can be added by the faster adoption of AI. It also aims to facilitate the more rapid adoption of AI across sectors, resulting in productivity and efficiency gains. Blindly ignoring that these productivity gains will come at the cost of job losses, as few people do the job of many, and this may increase margins of companies, but will reduce earnings as the earning power of the population goes down. Whether this loss of employment and earnings is factored into the GDP gains is unclear, as the report does not address this........

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