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Drone is a whole new industry created only in the last 18 months. There is a whole new profession that is created, the “Drone Pilots”.

Let’s see the case of Tanmay Bakshi; a 14 year old boy who is a prodigy and an expert in Artificial Intelligence. He is a phenomenal person who took to programming at the age of 5 observing his father who was a programmer. His interest was fuelled not only by his father’s work but also encouraged by the family. He became an AI programmer at the age of 10. He has given a TED talk while he was 12. He is also the consultant to IBM at the age of 14. He runs a neural network company and has a Youtube channel now. Eventually he visited the Cognizant office and spent about an hour with us.

During his visit to Cognizant, Tanmay Bakshi made few statements that are far reaching. The idea of AI or the community of people who work in the area of AI is not to create a human replica. He went on to the extent to say it is impossible to create the cognitive powers that a human being has through a computer. The intention of AI workers is to augment the capability and the intelligence that human beings possess to be more efficient, productive and innovative as we go forward.

ICT Academy is initially a Government of India funded project specifically for the state of Tamil Nadu. The first goal of ICT Academy was to increase the share of students passing out of TN in the IT industry. There were more numbers of students passing out of Tamil Nadu than any other state. The other goal realized was there are more students from tier-2 and tier-3 colleges who became a part of the IT industry. ICT Academy has managed to improve the competitiveness of colleges and students through various programs and will continue to bring in more initiatives that augment education and empower it. It was later recognized by NITI Aayog that ICT Academy model needs to be replicated. I would also like to thank Tata Consultancy Services who have stood by the initiatives of ICT Academy since the inception.

I always consider myself as a half-academician, primarily because when I came to Pune I was working as part of the R & D center. Computer Science was just starting to blossom at that time. There were quite a few colleges that have started Computer Science as a curriculum. I remember every 6 months we used to host computer science faculty members at our research center and we would get them updated on various technologies and fundamentals on new and emerging trends.

Subsequently, I was also the faculty at the Master’s Program at the College of Engineering, Pune. For the last 15 years, I have spent time at IEEE volunteering and I have made lot of friends in the academia.

I’m here to give you a perspective about the industry. When I looked at the topic “Future of Work” and I thought what future is, and realized that the future is now. Whatever we have been inventing or discovering, most of the things are pretty much here. Having mentioned about drones, they are in use now. Talk about AI, it is being used now. Many of you here are using Facebook and people recognize where you are, based on the data points your devices are collecting. The future that we have envisaged and all of us have worked very hard is very much here.

Work activities involving mental or physical effort are done in order to achieve a result. Let me show you the two perspectives of Future of Work, the demographic changes and technology changes. The population is increasing with the life expectancy also increasing drastically. We have a wrong perspective that everyone in the globe is connected online but that’s wrong; almost 400 Crore people are offline. There are statistics which show that working people will be distributed equally in urban and rural locations which bring us a question that, what change it will bring, if this happens? It will lead to automation.

According to McKinsey, Steam Engine automation gave 0.3% efficiency in 60 years, and then came the Electro Mechanical automation which gave 0.4% efficiency in 40 years, then Information Technology gave 0.6% efficiency in 10 years now the AI and robotics are expected to give 1% of efficiency for 50 years which is far more effective than others. But will this AI and Robotics will improve our deployment or create problems for deployment? The statistics shows that in 40 years more than 50% of human activity will be taken over by Robotics, also more jobs will be created during to this process.

Ultimately, even though we expect more jobs to be created in the future, the current works, which will be replaced by AI will have a lot of issues. The world we are living is generous but the future will be more of visionaries. It will be the place where ICT Academy will have a lot of roles to play. Unemployability is a bigger problem than unemployment. We need to improve the skillset of our students before they hit into market because only the students who are ready to upskill will remain in the market. So, the job of academia is not to skill the students but to teach the students how to skill themselves in the future to survive. The urge to learn is the key to success. When automation gets into our job, it’s our urge which will help us to learn and up skill ourselves for the future. Nowadays, companies are ready to pay employees to uplift their skills but it’s the employees who should be ready to skill themselves to survive.

Hospitals, schools and colleges are doing business now, which is not bad if it is non-profit oriented. Deloitte study graphical representation that clearly shows the changing trends in technology. Individuals and businesses are relatively quick to adapt to ongoing innovations for survival, but educational system moves at a slower pace. Curriculum is the hardest to change so we should work together to bring change in the system since the system itself is very slow. We need a disruption right now in the education system. ICT Academy is doing a wonderful job in accelerating the process but until Corporate and Academia start thinking, change will be slow. Since ICT Academy has organized Bridge in which Government of India, Corporate and academia come on a single plane,it’s the right time to make disruptive innovation. We should start sowing the seed of disruptive innovation in our nation so that there will be change. I want each and every one of you to think about this educational disruption in a broad perspective. Despite the challenges like policy restriction and curriculum restrictions, I want academia to think of the following ideas in their educational system:

• Outsourcing - Outsourcing syllabus to the students. 50% to 70 % of the theory can be self-learned by the students using books, Khan Academy, Coursera etc., brings you the Learn – assist – rate method to facilitate this process. This method gives you the time where the lecturer can explain, give a case study or even give an industrial view on the self-learned topics.
• Scrum – Scrum is a standup meeting in which a person gives a brief about his work. We can take the Scrum method to college students through which students explain share self-learning with others, through which challenges faced by the students get corrected right away in a retrospective method that helps to make a change in the system.
• Interdisciplinary - Interdisciplinary involves the combining of two or more academic disciplines into one activity. Indian educational system lacks this Interdisciplinary system.

Similarly, we can adopt many methods from business rather than focusing on profit. These new methods are the magic of disruptive innovation. Most of the high school education is in English language; which surprises me because most of the non-urban population is not coming from English medium. I appreciate ICT Academy for the 40 Day soft skill training program which helps the individual to be ready for professional education.

We have a curriculum and we need to figure out what we can do differently within the given curriculum. A university affiliation stops you from doing new things on your execution method. Universities define the curriculum but they do not dictate the execution process. Small start will become a big change when all colleges come together. In my job as an employee of DELL we do have policies, frameworks but every day we still find a creative method of doing things. My urge as I close this speech to think differently inside the framework, the secret of change is to focus all your energy, not fighting the old, but building the new.

Out of my experience of having a good fortune of working around 25 years in the industry, the topic “Future of Work” is very interesting, and what I find crucial is not about knowing what is to be done rather, how much you are willing to act upon. Are you mentally ready or not? It all starts with the mindset.

We all have a very important role to play in this agenda. I will be talking largely about 4 areas. One is the current reality,

• Where we are currently as far as the work place is concerned?
• Where would we like to go?
• What are some of the current challenges here?
• And more importantly how do we forge an alliance to shape the workplace of the future

We live in a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) world. That is our current reality. The world is only going to get more volatile, uncertain, complex and more ambiguous. It is not just about the businesses; it’s also about careers.

Everyone doesn’t necessarily need be an entrepreneur; we may find increasing numbers of companies that require people with an entrepreneurial mindset called intrapreneurs – entrepreneurs within the corporate world.

One last suggestion; a lot of IIT’s alumni, who are VCs, have funded the institution. Whether it is Vinod Khosla or Narayana Murthy, they have invested in setting up incubation centers. I’m sure every academic institution will have distinguished alumni who are willing to pay back to their alma mater in some form which should be capitalized for the betterment of the future generations.

“Future of Work” is the most debated and discussed topic. When we think Future of Work in the preglobalization era, different types of work played a major role and in post globalization era there is the evolution of IT industry along with the change in the work culture. We are able to see how IT has reached all the verticals in India. Even then, the evolution of IT is still hard to predict the Future of Work. In the Academic point of view, it is difficult to produce good resource for the Future of Work.

In 2014, PwC has published a paper about “Journey towards 2022” in which it has clearly predicted the issues that are happening now. The PwC prediction stated that student protests will happen due to unemployment because of academia becoming incapable to keep up a good pace with the changes in the technology. PwC has predicted 3 scenarios as per which, work is divided into Blue, Green and Orange.

Blue: In this scenario “big company capitalism” rules and the primary goal and purpose of a business is to focus on profits, revenue, and growing market share, pretty similar to what companies focus on today, except they will become even larger and more monolithic.

Green: Here we see a world in which both employees and customers force change. Companies are very focused on sustainability, well-being, and eco-living.

Orange: In this scenario freelancers and entrepreneurs dominate the employment landscape and companies break up into smaller entities in order to stay relevant with fast changing world we live and work in.

We should develop the teacher community with long-term plan and should produce best teachers which in turn would produce best talented students for the industry. We need to improve the methods of teaching and upgrade in timely manner. Mandatory skills for industry should be provided in the college level for the students. Innovation and entrepreneurship needs should be propagated during the course. We need to draft employment oriented curriculum for students. When industry and academia join together we can nurture our youth towards the Future of Work.

Even though we speak of future let’s have a view of our past and present. Certain works have not changed for millions of years despite the growth of technology and innovation. Infrastructures have changed but the purpose is the same. The way we worked in the past and the present are different, but the ultimate purpose is the work. The pace of technology development is fast as compared to infrastructure, but adapting to which is slower. That is the key area where we have to make a change. I think the software development will need paradigm shift. The core software will not change at faster pace but it is the frontend where innovation plays a major role.

Innovation and Differentiation System are completely different, so we should reinvent our professions. The innovation like Cloud has provided us Distributing Computer, Microservice etc., which have made our life easier. Benefits of innovations like standardization, keeping things small, and automation of things will yield great results. When things move from manual processes to automation, our process gets simple and easy to follow. This process will bring speed, resilience and agility to the business.

To adapt to Cloud Native, we need to change the thoughts in Provisioning, Procuring, Project Management, Architecture, Building Code etc., despite our position in the company, and this is the way to restructure your organization and workplace. Pace Layererd Architecture is the concept which is the trend now in which if your system of record is proper, the necessity of change will happen in the system of differentiation and system of engagement.

The modern innovation and technology has crushed the dream jobs for many people. The definition of employment, income and skill is gradually changing. People work in their jobs not for passion but for survival.The nature of income is changing in a fast pace just like technology. When we compare the happiness and the income, they are directly proportional. Universal basic income varies in one’s perspective. Skilling oneself is very important because only through learning, we can develop ourselves.

Automation is happening around the world. Our repetitive and boring jobs are taken care through automation. For the first time in the last 20 years globally, the wage share in GDP has reduced and the profit contribution from companies in GDP has increased. For the last 140 years, technology has been a great job creator. Technology has transformed every single business today and will continue to do so in future. While technology creates opportunities, automation will take over elementary jobs. AI will challenge specialized jobs. Workplace, Economy, Education, Healthcare, Government and Policy have always played a major role for the changes in our workplace.

Re-skill is the aspect in your life you need to imbibe to face the challenge, exploit the Gig Economy, and embrace change. Find new ways and innovate to survive in business and life.

We are midst the fourth industry revolution, which is intelligent industrial evolution. According to McKinsey there are 3 trends that will define the evolution.

Interoperability: The ability of computer systems or software to exchange and make use of information.

Machine Assistance: Machine will be assisting us in the entire stream like so we should re-skill ourselves for this interaction for the future.

Decentralization: Decentralization is the process of distributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or things away from a central location or authority.

Any learning, teaching or work process, the evaluation should be made on these three parameters. But these three parameters are in a process of change that’s where Nvidia comes into play. Moore’s law is the observation made in 1965 that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years but it’s going out of stream.

GPU computing model is becoming more prominent and becoming the architecture for AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning. We are able to see a fundamental shift in the computing model taking place. We expect GPU computing speedup will increase 1000 times by 2025. Virtual Reality will get converted into Collaborative Virtual Reality urban cities will be converted into AI city. Healthcare sectors will have machine assistance in wide range, and machines will be converted into AI Machines. So we need to re-skill ourselves and get the new technology which will lead to new jobs. In business, we will have two components that are predictions and judgment. Machine will help us to predict and the judgment will be in human hand. So, as humans, it’s our responsibility to judge and use the judgment in right path.

Future of Work according to me is how things are going to be made in future, how manufacturing is going through a change. Future of making things is changing in a different speed where the knowledge which we have acquired in college is not sufficient in the industry point of view. Earlier, we used Floppy Disks but now we are using Cloud. So the institutes should skill themselves to upgrade and get the latest technology. The three trends that we need to make a note are innovation, productivity and process. We should change our skills to the new emerging technology in the market, as the skills we acquire in the college level may not be always enough to do our jobs.

Innovation: Innovation can be defined simply as a “new idea, device or method”. However, innovation is often viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs.

We need to think outside the box when it comes to innovation. Innovation is not just a process of creating something out of a facility but doing from scratch always plays ahead.

Productivity: Productivity describes various measures of the efficiency of production. Technology has enabled massive personal productivity gains but it’s always temporary when it comes to productivity. Every single person can be productive. But sometimes what we consider as benchmark can become a necessity for business.

Process: A process is a set of activities that interact to achieve a result. Nowadays, processes are being innovated. We have companies producing products through generative design which no other company can copy or create without the software that was used by the generative design companies. This generative design cannot be mastered by any individual on its own.

Innovation is fast, so academia should also think in a different mode to skill the students to be market ready. Using multiple computers and with the help of the Cloud, we can have access to vast number of designs in various streams. All the innovation is not happening in future, but it is happening at present. So we should try to capture the changes now and should begin the innovation process.

The youth of India have the necessity to innovate. Their thinking process is different and perspectives are different. This generation is smart and thinks differently than earlier generations. We have come long way from imagination to innovation. Innovation is reality now. This generation is born with difference, in which they are different from their grandparents and parents. Youth expects to fit in their workplace with the modern atmosphere they grew up in. So their thought process is completely different. This generation is the catalyst of transformation where there are very collaborative people and can use the modern tools in workplace. The workplace we work will be completely different in future. Since customers are moving fast and all the organizations want to catch up with the customer, we have to innovate at a faster pace.

We should check the need of the industry and update to it in the college days itself. So this generation wants a workplace which makes life easier and harmonious. To reinvent the Future of Work experience, we need to create a workplace with innovative aspects. This is where we need the help of a machine which does the job without bias and distraction and that brings more efficiency. The machines have also evolved in this process of innovation from calculator to computer.

This generation is in search of purpose with an entrepreneurial approach in their career. Youth should know how to create their own brand. So the industry and educational system work with this generation in the way they want, in order to extract more innovation from them. Collaboration is the main aspect of youth. So we should create an environment for the generation to create a bright future.

Since Indian stock market is small which is $ 2.3 Trillion, in my perspective AI or Robotics will not take over the job opportunity of humans completely. We will always have the intervention of humans which will play a major role. We don’t have a correct understanding on how the human beings will behave in the next 10 years due to the rapid change of technology. Humans are unaware that our mind work is being done by electronic device.

Technium is a specific technology and the new trend. Technium are like individual or species or the ecosystem of these individual. Technology has its own agenda and urges. An individual technological organism has one kind of response, but in an ecology comprised of co-evolving species of technology we find an elevated entity, and Technium behaves very differently from an individual species. Prognosis is like a child of humanity; hence our job will be to train the Technium to imbue it with certain principles which will become autonomous in future.

Automation and machines are replacing so many jobs. Many people think that only the poor and uneducated are being displaced but everyone will be replaceable. In the future the bots will take the jobs like loan process in which every single job will be done by a robot and the decision will be taken by the human. Bots coexisting with humans for process execution is what will be happening.

We have a lot of data available now and HR Analytics case is also playing a major role in giving us the predictions of future. Varied analyses are very difficult for humans with this vast data but when we have the part to play like the judgment, humans are good at it. So we should develop the Technium organization which will lead a better place that is called the Future of Work.