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Innovations needed to meet ‘Digital India’ goals
NEW DELHI: While the telecom industry is on track, there is need for innovation to meet the goals of Digital India. This was the general outcome of discussions at South Asia’s largest ICT, broadcast and digital media event, which ended today.
The expo witnessed 434 companies from 29 countries around the world showcasing the latest technologies and innovations. Over 125 eminent speakers took the dais to deliberate on the theme ‘Digital India’ – roadmap, opportunities, challenges, infrastructure and investments.
The third day of the expo deliberated on affordable broadband for rural India at the third Telecom Summit, powered by Microsoft, thus facilitating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of making India a digitally empowered economy.
Microsoft group director, government affairs & public policy S. Chandrasekhar said, “Exhibitions India and Convergence India provide a good platform for all telecom and ICT eco-systems to come together and exchange ideas, best practices and the best of technology.”
A presentation on ‘Internet of Things in Mobile Workforce Management’ was given by Cyient – India senior manager Venkata Satyadeep Mane. “Technology is an enabler to build smart solutions for rapid growth. Industries in India are therefore aiming to build cutting-edge technology solutions and services that will shape the digital revolution. Accordingly, the Indian ICT marketplace is going to experience substantial shifts in the coming days! In this content, I believe Convergence India is a fantastic platform to share and learn not just technology but various other elements of business solutions,” he said.
Key session on ‘Opportunities in telecom sector arising from Big Data & Cloud’ panelist HP India country leader – future cities & CTO – technology services Lux Rao said, “The promise of Digital India has been successful in capturing the aspirations of a young India and the unbridled optimism is palpable. Smart Cities & Digital India is lending traction to the country’s modernisation agenda.”
He added, “Convergence India holds a mirror to the current state of programmes and their progress and is a convergence of philosophy, ideas and action. The three-day program packs in an eclectic combination of knowledge and experience sharing, networking opportunities and a deep dive into fast emerging ethos of an empowered nation – Truly Digital, Truly India.”
Exhibitions India Group chairman Prem Behl, who conceived Convergence India, said, “The exhibitors have received quality visitors and have had a positive response on all three days of the expo. The concurrent conferences were productive with detailed discussions and presentations on Digital India.”
A landmark session on the third day included the SCTE India Awards for Technical Excellence and Innovation in Digital Cable and Broadband.
‘GSMA India open day 2016’ hosted a discussion on India’s mobile industry growth trends and forecasts, challenges in this fast changing market, mechanisms being used to ease efforts in monetising this market and the innovations India will need to deliver a Digital India from industry leaders.
Participating exhibiting names included Broadcom, C-Dot, Conax, Cyient, Ericsson, EMC, Harmonic, MediaTek, Microsoft, M-Star, Nagra, Sandisk, Telenor, and Thomson to name a few.
Convergence India 2016 expo was endorsed by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology, the Communications & Information Technology, and the Information and Broadcasting Ministries.
Exhibitions India Group (EIG) has been organising the annual International Convergence India series of expos since 1992, and will witness its silver jubilee edition at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from 8 to 10 February next year.
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AI could replace half of entry-level white-collar work: Anthropic study
Hiring in AI-exposed occupations fell 14 per cent post-ChatGPT
SAN FRANCISCO: From lamplighters to elevator operators, waves of technology have repeatedly erased once-common jobs. Now artificial intelligence may be poised to do the same for large swathes of professional work.
A new study by Anthropic suggests that while AI tools are technically capable of performing many knowledge-economy tasks, real-world adoption lags far behind that potential, at least for now.
The report, Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence, by Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory, introduces a new metric called “observed exposure,” which compares what AI systems could theoretically perform with what they are actually doing in workplaces.
Using professional interaction data from Anthropic’s Claude model, the researchers found that AI could theoretically cover a wide share of tasks in business, finance, management, computing, mathematics, legal services and office administration. Yet current adoption represents only a small fraction of those capabilities.
That gap between potential and reality reflects a mix of legal barriers, technical limitations and the continued need for human oversight, the study said. But the authors suggest those constraints may prove temporary as the technology matures.
Warnings about AI’s impact on white-collar employment have been growing. CEO Dario Amodei has previously argued that AI could disrupt as much as half of entry-level professional work, while Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has suggested that most professional tasks could eventually be automated within 12 to 18 months.
Highly educated workers most exposed
Contrary to common assumptions, the study finds that workers most exposed to AI are not those in manual labour but highly educated professionals. The most exposed group is 16 percentage points more likely to be female, earns on average 47 per cent more than the least exposed group and is nearly four times as likely to hold a graduate degree.
Occupations including computer programmers, customer service representatives and data entry clerks are among the most vulnerable to automation.
Yet even in highly exposed fields, AI is not yet replacing jobs at scale. The researchers cite routine medical tasks, such as authorising prescription refills, as examples that AI could technically perform but is not widely observed doing in practice.
In the report’s visual framework, actual AI usage (the “red area”) remains far smaller than the theoretical “blue area” of possible tasks. Over time, the researchers expect the red area to expand as adoption deepens.
At the other end of the labour market, roughly 30 per cent of occupations show virtually no AI exposure. Roles such as cooks, mechanics, bartenders and dishwashers still depend heavily on physical presence and manual work that large language models cannot replicate.
Hiring slowdown rather than layoffs
So far the clearest labour-market signal is not mass layoffs but a slowdown in hiring within AI-exposed occupations.
According to the study, job-finding rates in those sectors have fallen about 14 per cent since the arrival of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT compared with 2022 levels. A separate study cited by the authors found a 16 per cent drop in employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles.
Recent labour data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics also point to softer hiring conditions, with employers shedding 92,000 jobs in February and unemployment rising to 4.4 per cent.
Some companies have already linked layoffs to automation. Jack Dorsey said his payments firm Block recently cut nearly half its workforce in part because AI tools allow smaller teams to operate more efficiently.
Not everyone is convinced the technology is solely responsible. Critics such as Marc Benioff have accused some firms of “AI washing”, using automation as a convenient explanation for cost-cutting measures.
Still, the researchers warn that the longer-term risk is a potential “white-collar recession”. If unemployment in the most AI-exposed occupations were to double, from about 3 per cent to 6 per cent, it would mirror the scale of labour-market disruption seen during the Global Financial Crisis.
For now, the shift may simply mean fewer entry-level openings. Some young workers are staying longer in existing roles, switching sectors or returning to education rather than entering AI-exposed fields.
