Online brokerage firm Zerodha has come up with an internal artificial intelligence – AI policy that provides clarity to the employees of the company about their jobs.
This move came in the midst of increasing anxiety and worry among people due to new disruptive technologies leading to removing of jobs.
Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath wrote on the social media platform Twitter, “We will not fire anyone on the team just because we have implemented a new piece of technology that makes an earlier job redundant”.
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He shared a screenshot of his associate Mr. K who said that “…apart from a commodity image recognition tool for processing images during onboarding, we use no other AI or ML systems. We have not come across any problems yet where we felt the need to turn to ML solutions.” This is in reference to his 2021 claim of not wanting to use AI technologies in the company.
There was a Goldman Sachs report released recently which mentioned how the increasing use of artificial intelligence could make 300 million jobs go away. It also predicted how the significant disruption in the job market can lead to the automation of two-thirds of jobs in Europe and the United States.
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Kamath mentioned how businesses in today’s competitive world are giving more importance to shareholder value creation above other stakeholders like customers, employees, vendors, countries, and the whole planet. Profits are considered above everything else in today’s times, otherwise, shareholders vote such companies out.
In the process of making shareholders wealthier, companies will just let go of their employees who are the most important asset to the organization. It is impossible for humans to compete with machines like AI and thus, it is not good for humanity.
However, many companies have slowed down their hiring process or removed roles that are more into human resources and back-office functions. Such companies are of the opinion that automation and AI adoption will cut their costs and also improve their revenues in the coming years.
Artificial Intelligence is not only increasing job insecurity among people all over the world but also making them think twice while leaving their present jobs to look for a better one. It is because people are yet to upskill themselves with the right AI tools to perform their jobs better. Also, the adaptability to change the methodology of working and also perform better in their jobs is still uncertain.
Also, companies are not having a people-centered approach while hiring and managing their human resources. They think about cost-cutting measures when they don’t meet the expected level of profits. This has given rise to more than 100 startups in India alone to announce layoffs since late last year.
Companies should start having a policy in place that will give equal importance to human resources and automation if they find AI-related use cases in their products and services. Just removing people from their jobs just because AI is trending doesn’t look good and can hit their reputation in the long run.
