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Kumar answers commonly asked questions about AI, drawing on research Cognizant has conducted to better understand how it will impact the workforce today and into the future.
Why won't AI replace humans in the workforce?
AI can automate many tasks, from generating emails to coding and more, potentially freeing up workers to spend more time creating and innovating. But most jobs at a variety of levels still need a human.
AI will never create a like-for-like replacement for a human position. For example, AI is never going to replace surgeons, but generative AI can perform administrative tasks that help doctors have more time to see and care for patients. Generative AI can also aid diagnostics, since there is too much data for any one doctor to know. AI opens access to more data and can identify patterns in that data most humans wouldn't have the capacity to see.
Can you assess the potential impact of AI industry-by-industry or job-by-job?
We quantify the impact of AI through what we call an "exposure score" and a "friction score." The exposure score estimates how likely a task is to be taken over by AI, while the friction score refers to how easily that employee can be retrained.
Consider a developer versus a fisherman. There are 21 million developers worldwide, but programming
work can largely be taken over by AI - a high exposure score. However, developers are highly retrainable, giving them a low friction score. On the other hand, fishermen are unlikely to be replaced with AI, but if robots were created that could fish, what transferable skills do they have? That's an example of a low exposure score and high friction score.
Cognizant and Oxford Economics partnered to develop what we've called our "New Work, New World" study, which analyzes how AI will affect the workforce. The study applied these scores to 18,000 tasks in 1,000 jobs, discovering that 90% of jobs could experience some degree of disruption by AI over the next 10 years.
Cognizant currently works with companies to assess exposure and friction scores of all their positions, among other crucial information, to help companies better understand how and when to retrain employees. Understanding what each company and their employees need now and into the future is key to helping them optimize AI for growth and development.
How will AI impact business profitability?
We're now in an era of hyper-productivity as enterprises fundamentally rewire their businesses for new levels of agility, productivity and innovation. In a recent analysis we did as part of our "New Work, New World" study, we found that more than three-fourths of businesses (76%) are looking to use generative AI to create new revenue streams. Companies also plan to invest an average of $47.5 million in generative AI this year.
With our data showing generative AI tools potentially injecting nearly $1