The rapid advancement in the development and application of artificial intelligence or AI is best put to use in the business process outsourcing industry in the country, according to Sanjay Sarma president, CEO and dean at the Asia School of Business (ASB).
Sarma said AI is going to replace jobs in the BPO sector and called on leaders to put it to good use in the call center industry. “It will put some people out of work, but at least you define the rules of how it works,” according to Sarma.
He said this has to be a national effort.
“The government needs to be really cognizant that this is an epic moment. It’s like, you know, climate change is going to damage the environment. It’ll hurt a lot of people, this is going to hurt a lot of people. This is technology change just like climate change,” he said.
Sarma, a professor of mechanical engineering and the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said AI is developing at an unprecedented pace and will be everywhere soon.
“I’m telling you it’s not (happening in) 10 years, it’s one or two years. The reason is that for these transforming technologies, there are now lots of companies working. And there’s millions, hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on it,” he said.
He noted while older and successfully adopted technologies such as automated teller machines took about 15 years to be widely accepted, people no longer have the luxury of time with AI.
In the case of ATMs, Sarma said the immediate concern at the time was that bank tellers would lose their jobs.
“But that did not happen. In fact, bank tellers did something more advanced, which is selling mortgages and things like that. The job changed so (bank tellers) become cognitive. They did the more cognitively advanced tasks and ATMs did the cash. But it took 10 years or 15 years. The problem here (with AI) is it’s moving very fast.
“I mean, chat GPT only appeared in December or November 2022. We are now in September 2023. It now has more than 100 million users,” Sarma said.
To adapt to changes brought by the use of AI, Sarma said local industries like the BPO sector will need to upgrade into the technology space.
“You can’t be at this (low) level, you have to go up because the attack comes from below. It’s like a tiger, you know, it’s chasing you, you climb a tree, the tiger learns to climb the first 10 feet. Well, you have to climb higher. You have to go higher up in the cognitive stock,” he said.
Sarma is a leading authority in AI, the internet of things and education.
The Asian School of Business, established in 2015 by Bank Negara Malaysia in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management, aims to be the premier business school developing transformative and principled leaders who contribute to the advancement of the emerging world, particularly in Asia.
Sarma teaches there alongside Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas governor Eli Remolona.
