One of our esteemed faculty @Maathangi Iyer was invited to speak to the students of RVS Padhmavathy COE, Chennai. Let’s see what she has to say to the Gen Z about how to get future job-ready.
TN Hari writes in his book – Cutting the Gordian Knot, that “in a recent survey conducted on top-of-mind concerns, one-third of the participants reported fear of robots taking their jobs as a major cause of worry.”
Maathangi here has a further take on it explaining, how machines are NOT really taking our jobs, but facilitating our availability to perform more core jobs like Creating, Discovering and Disrupting.
She explained to the students, how Man’s role needs to be re-invented in the world of AI, where things like Designing, Building and Trouble-Shooting a car – are done by a machine, however sitting with the customer and helping him put his imagination and custom requirements into words and drawings – is something that requires a human intervention.
She further explained the importance of Critical Thinking and Communications skills using a role-play themed – “Who would you hire?” and gave them goals to begin their self-exploration like,
– Make a list of things you are passionate about
– Learn a new skill/ language/ subject
– Identify the things that will make you a Global corporate resource than just an industry or job-specific resource
While the answer to this dilemma of how AI is going to affect the future of jobs, what needs to be considered is that – AI and ML are only operational because of the available data that has been collected over the years; and even if it does extrapolate the future possibilities, it does that too basis the past. The past that was at some point the present. So while the facts from the past are fed to the machines to do our activities, we can start discovering new facts with our new found bandwidth.
