Automation – Gain or pain!!!
Venkatesan Mudaliar
| Biostatistics | | Statistical Programming | | Data Standardization | | Data Management | |Clinical Data Consulting | |Portfolio optimization | |Decision-making | |Bayesian analysis | |Operational strategy.|
Automation, whether business process automation or general automation essentially means, “The use of computers or other control systems to control a particular process in order to increase reliability and efficiency, often through a reduction in labor”. What does this line convey to you? I see both a pain and a gain in this definition of automation. But where we leading, Are we leading to “Technological unemployment”. Historical example India include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanized looms. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills.
Automation definitely increases the reliability and efficiency and thereby increase productivity. At the same time it does cause a reduction in the employee workforce. Yet there are certain advantages to the employees due to automation which might outweigh the disadvantages.
According to World Bank president Jim Kim, Automation threatens the job cut by 69% in India, where these job cut started realizing in some of the industries across the world. He also added that, the “Technology could fundamentally disrupt the pattern of traditional economic path in the developing countries”. As we foresee, India is youngest country in 2020 with 64% of the population in the working group; which could possibly add significant 2 per cent GDP growth rate comparatively other developing nations. So, with expected 64 per cent working group in 2020 with 69 per cent job threat due to automation. So this means job performed by every 100 current employees will be replaced with only 31 employees to perform. However the statistics also quote that 8 per cent jobs will be increased in medium skilled jobs and subsequent rise in highly skilled jobs”, which require combination of creative problem solving, analytics and critical thinking people.
So what is right: the pessimists (many of them techie types), who say this time is different and machines really will take all the jobs, or the optimists (mostly economists and historians), who insist that in the end technology always creates more jobs than it destroys? The truth probably lies somewhere in between. AI will not cause mass unemployment, but it will speed up the existing trend of computer-related automation, disrupting labor markets just as technological change has done before, and requiring workers to learn new skills more quickly than in the past.
Mr Bessen predicts a “difficult transition” rather than a “sharp break with history”. But despite the wide range of views expressed, pretty much everyone agrees on the prescription: that companies and governments will need to make it easier for workers to acquire new skills and switch jobs as needed. That would provide the best defense in the event that the impact of artificial intelligence proves to be more rapid and more dramatic and will lead India’s growth.
Clinical research: Current trend in regulatory agencies transition of making global standards in the clinical research industry and IT driven process will may have impact on the job implications too. Few companies have already initiated job cuts, now we need to see how fare it affects the industry and jobs.
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