AI will undoubtedly disrupt the labour market, but it will also create new opportunities: CareAsOne CTO

AI & generative AI (GenAI) have been at the forefront of technology transformation in recent time. However, these new technologies have also created concerns with regard to their disruption potential on existing business model, hence on the labour market. In a conversation with the Bizz Buzz, US-based CareAsOne’s co-founder and CTO, Paras Chaudhary said that AI & GenAI will definitely lead to disruption in the labour market. He, however, opined that this is likely to create more jobs, which can be tapped through upskilling of human resources. On the impact on Indian IT industry, Chaudhary said that they are likely to hire lesser number of people as they used to earlier. However, AI-related costs will be added to clients’ charges in the near future. He also opined that enterprise-specific solutions from GenAI are still some steps away.

The advent of generative AI (GenAI) has led to many excitements among stakeholders and at the same time, it has also raised concerns over possible job losses arising from disruption in the labour market. How do you view the impact of GenAI on the overall society?

With the adoption of AI and GenAI, labour market is likely to see disruption. Especially, many menial tasks are going to be automated. A lot of work in the content space is going to be affected. Even engineers doing low level tasks are losing their jobs. But for doing complex jobs, AI and GenAI are going to work as a supplement to solve those problems.

So, I think, it is likely to be a disruptor in many fields. However, it is not a threat. Every new technology during its beginning, creates fear among people. The first reaction to any new technological application has been the fear as we are afraid of anything, which we don’t understand. So, every technology goes through this cycle of surprise, fear and then adoption. But, Gen AI has been built by us and it will help the society is solving many problems. It is already solving many problem statements across several industries.

For instance, in healthcare, legal & financial services, AI and GenAI are solving many problems. In my professional career, we built something which could pull out relevant part from a lengthy legal document. Such AI-powered automation has saved a lot of time. So, there will always be need of human resources, who will control the AI system but many low-level jobs will become redundant. In this respect, people have to be reskilled, get better at it, and know the value they provide for better leveraging AI and GenAI tools.

Some experts are of the opinion that while GenAI has come up with many consumer-focussed use cases, it is yet to be successful in coming up with large scale enterprise-wise solutions, solving specific business problems. What is your opinion in this matter?

Currently, many people are using the ChatGPT tool of OpenAI to get a first-hand experience of any GenAI tool. I think, that is a marketing initiative of OpenAI as this is the front-end platform, which people like I and you can play around with. From my academic and professional experience, I can say that these GPT models were in existence for a while before ChatGPT became popular. Universities, researchers and other stakeholders knew about this. But the genius of OpenAI was that they made a website in which people can use it. That’s how, they make it a talk of the town and it gave it the hype. However, AI has been for a while and bigger technology firms were already using it. For example, GitHub’s Copilot, which helps developers to write code, has been there for more than two years. Recently, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella talks about it (in their earnings). So, companies are already using it and it is making a disruption. All the layoffs that happened because these companies used AI and realised that there was need for those additional resources. The big disruption is happening in the industry space as they are increasingly adopting GenAI-led solutions.

Indian IT industry has thrived for decades on good talent base, and cost arbitrage. However, the T&M (time and material) model is the prevalent operating model. Will the Indian IT industry face any kind of disruption to its business model owing to large scale adoption of GenAI models?

There is definitely changing as we speak. Global IT services companies are increasingly using AI in all their service offerings. So, the cost they charge is not only the human resources they deploy but also the AI resources. It may happen that they may hire lesser number of people that they used to. But we have to understand that for AI to provide a creative solution to a problem, IT firms require good human resources. Engineers are always expensive in the US than India and there are also not enough number of resources available in the North American country. That is not the case in India. India has the biggest technology talent base because the country puts a premium on education. So, the demand-supply gap will exist but the hiring numbers may drop given the AI adoption.

Can you provide a brief overview about CareAsOne, the company which you have co-founded?

CareAsOne is a digital platform for caregivers. Caregivers are the people, who come to your home to take care of your elders and kids. Our platform allows agencies to hire caregivers in the US and Canada. Usually, these agencies hire people searching job websites like Indeed. However, they are not able to hire people with right skillsets. However, in our platform, only caregivers are listed and agencies are able to get the people with right skillsets to employ them as caregivers. That is our main business model. Apart from that, we are also providing client leads. People, who require caregivers, can connect with the agencies that provide such services. We also provide marketing solutions in our platform.

Do you plan to replicate this model back home in India?

Currently, we don’t have any presence in India except the engineering support team. But we plan to start operation in India in the future. In the US, the population is ageing and they require caregivers. So, we will definitely expand our operations to India but for now, it is primarily focussed in the US and Canada. Our thought process is that if we can solve it in the America, where it is not part of the social behaviour, then we can replicate this model in India.

Are you planning to enter any new business venture related to AI in the future?

Another business venture, we are mulling is to enter the mental health space. This space is huge and we are looking into how AI can meaningfully solve mental health problems. It is still a problem to use AI in the regulated healthcare space as who will be responsible for any wrong recommendation remains a challenge. As the technology matures, we are looking into it.