Infosys Co-Founder: Technology Helps Create More Jobs, Not Kill

The strong development of robots and artificial intelligence has caused many people to worry about their work because they replace many positions in different industries. NR Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys calmed people that emerging AI technologies will not replace and make people unemployed. On the contrary, he asserts that it will open up more opportunities and other jobs for people in the future. AI is likely to take on hard works or waste human resources jobs, and instead, people will be put into positions that require more human contact.

NR Narayana Murthy

Murthy said that AI, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and large data analytics are today's advanced technologies and will become increasingly important in supporting and helping human lives easier and more comfortable. AI is one of the technologies with great potential for development and very strong in the future.

Typically, we can see, Japan and the United States are the two countries with the most developed technology in the world, and in parallel, the unemployment situation in these areas is greatly improved, unemployment rate shows only one digit.

Murthy has pointed out that in the past 50 years since computers became more common, countries that caught up with technology development better have further decreased their employment rate than those who did not.

As in a report from the World Economic Forum (WEF), more modern technologies and algorithms are being developed rapidly and by 2020 it is likely to create 133 million new jobs to replace the previous 75 million jobs.

Murthy completely opposes the idea that technology development will eliminate human workers and employees, causing them to be unemployed.

He stressed that the new technologies developed aimed at reducing the burden of human works and enabling them to make more chance to contact other people in different positions. This both helps people work more gently and creates a stronger connection and cohesion in the society between human and human.

On Saturday at the Infosys Prize ceremony, Murphy mentioned that he did not believe that technology would make unemployment worse.

Another example he mentioned to prove the benefits of technology are automatic teller machines (ATMs). It has really helped people withdraw money more conveniently. People can withdraw money anywhere and anytime easily instead of queuing or waiting in turn at the bank and coming in working hours.

At Infosys Prize 2018, up to 6 famous professors have been honored with various scientific and technical research awards. This annual awards ceremony has many valuable prizes including a citation, a pure gold medal and a reward of $100,000 (equivalent to Rs. 7,122,252).