Infosys President: Pandemic will 'accelerate' automation

Ravi Kumar, Infosys President breaks down how automation will boom from the coronavirus pandemic as the workforce adjusts.

Video Transcript

RAVI KUMAR: You know, in the United States, 40 million people have lost jobs. 70% of the people who have lost jobs do not have an undergrad degree. They either have a high school or associate degree. I would believe this is an inflection point where we want to move from degrees to skills.

As the pandemic-- just right before the pandemic, the change was very gradual, and you're going to now find this to be sudden. There was a shift to future jobs. There was a World Economic Forum report which spoke about 125 million jobs of the future being created, 75 million jobs of the past being taken away.

So this is our opportunity. We have a choice to either be sent back to the past, or reset into the future. And if we decide to reset into the future, we need radical reskilling, or a chain of learning as you called it. The radical reskilling you need starts from evaluation of skills, to finding the pathways, to online training, to hand holding and apprenticeship.

And the reason why I call this a chain needed for radical reskilling is because some of our industries have got decimated, some of our work streams have got decimated. So the 40 million people who need jobs will have to prepare for the jobs of the future, and will have to pivot to different industries which are proved by a recession.

So if you really want to do that, you need to bring a consortium of sorts with complementary players to come together to deal with reskilling. Unlike in the past recessions, reskilling was actually owned by individuals. Reskilling has to be owned by consortiums. I have to put one last point out here. You know, machines and AI being a part of workplaces was always happening for the last few years.

This pandemic is going to actually accelerate the embrace of machines and the AI software into workplaces. So you are going to see it shift from people, to people plus machines. And that shift is going to move the human endeavor to problem finding versus problem solving, which was always the trade needed in workplaces.