Indian American Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar engaged in an enlightening fireside chat during his recent meeting with the Indian American Business Impact Group. The discussion centered on the continuously evolving IT landscape, encompassing emerging trends and significant challenges, alongside exploring the potential influence of gen AI technologies on both the industry and society at large.
Ravi Kumar reflects on the changing landscape post-pandemic and due to the advancements in AI, sharing insights into their entrepreneurial mindset and the evolving role of technology in business. “The change ahead of us is significantly more than the change behind us,” he said.
“There have been technology discontinuities in the last 50 years. Most technology discontinuities have happened so far, humans wanted to understand what computers do. This is the first time computers want to understand what humans do and therefore the interface is natural language,” he added.
Kumar highlights the issue of social mobility in the United States, where a significant number of people leave jobs due to a lack of upward mobility opportunities. He discusses the potential impact of AI on his own business, predicting a reduction in the time required for employees to become independent and a democratization of expertise through knowledge sharing.
“We have 4 million people leaving jobs every month and we have 300,000 jobs getting created every month. 48 million people leave jobs every year, one-third of the US workforce. Why? Because they don't see upward mobility,” Kumar said.
He argues that AI can serve as a tool for leveling the playing field by enabling experts to share their knowledge with non-experts. “It's also a democratization tool because the ones who are experts will actually feed that expertise to the ones who are not experts and therefore it's kind of a level.”
When asked about the possibility of using AI tools to create highly efficient individuals, potentially leading to reshoring jobs from outsourced countries, Kumar emphasized that reshoring could occur due to increased productivity. He mentions that reshoring applies not only to services but also to manufacturing, especially with the application of robotics.
Kumar emphasizes the potential impact of AI and captives in India on job markets, expressing hope that most affected jobs will return. They view this as an opportunity for collaboration rather than competition, suggesting that companies like theirs can offer assistance in training and capability building to captives. He underscored the importance of providing technological infrastructure to support these efforts, highlighting their capacity to develop AI tools.
“Tighten your regulation on the usage. Don't regulate the foundation models. So what will then happen is innovation will thrive. Still, the usage of it will be regulated enough so you have enough of the innovation for you to power the usage. You have enough regulation in the usage to make it responsible enough,” he said when asked about AI regulation.
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