As the CEO of Shine.com at HT Media Limited, Zairus is defining and delivering its business strategy and providing overall leadership

Humanity’s fascination with automation has grown stronger with time, but the subject has also triggered much discussion and debate over the years. One of the questions that most commonly pop up when ever innovative technologies such as AI and automation are discussed is this: what will their impact be on human jobs?

Answering that question would require us to turn the clocks back to the late 18th century Britain.

How automation generated better employment opportunities and led to the industrial revolution
The water frame developed by John Kay and Richard Arkwright faced widespread resistance during its development, but the invention marked the beginning of the industrial revolution. Here are some of the major transformations that it brought about:

•For the first time in history, human labor was employed instead of merely being contracted.
•Regular workdays came into existence.
•Factories needed more‘skilled’labor.
•With the need for physical effort reduced, even women and children found employment in the mills, increasing the house hold incomes.

Rapid skilling and organization of the workforce followed. This enabled even those who previously had limited employment opportunities such as being farm laborers to enjoy much better prospects as skilled workers. It is estimated that, by the end of his tenure, Arkwright’s various mills employed more than 1,150 individuals, while factories leveraging his patented technology employed around 30,000 people in various capacities in 1785 alone.

Automation for value creation: Why new-age technologies willbe the job creators of tomorrow
A recent report by the World Economic Forum(WEF) titled The Future of Jobs 2018 estimates that machines will outperform humans at the workplace in terms of the number of tasks completed by 2025 and displace 75 million jobs. Such

predictions, coupled with recent industry trends, leave little room for doubt that new-age technologies will indeed either outright replace many existing job profiles or will force them to undergo drastic transformation in terms of their skills requirements.

However, we also have to consider that:
•Technological alarmists talking about jobs being lost to new-age technologies often fail to take into account the kind of job profiles that are being replaced.They also ignore the fact that the speed of job creation in newer domains will outpace the speed at which existing job profiles are being replaced.

•AI and automation will create around 133 million new job opportunities by 2022 – a net gain of around 58 million jobs. Newer jobs are also expected to be vastly different from those which are replaced in terms of quality, remuneration, value, and skills required.

Reskilling and Upskilling: How jobseekers can take advantage of the changing jobs landscape The'threat' that technology is deemed to pose to human jobs is overstated.The challenge lies in the fact that a majority of the current workforce doesn’t have the skill sets that are needed for the high-value, high-growth jobs of tomorrow.


The need of the hour is to equip professionals with the tools they need to avail the lucrative career opportunities that new-age technologies will create. Constant learning is the key that professionals need to unlock it. Reskilling and upskilling of the workforce can lead to the following benefits:

•Upgrading their existing skillsets allows job seekers to become better equipped to navigate the fast-changing realities of the modern-day business landscape.

•Employers can address the growing challenge of talent shortage and skills gap,putting them in a much better position to avail new business opportunities.

Leading online learning platforms such as ShineLearning.com are helping both employers and jobseekers to prepare for this tech-driven future. They leverage data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to crunch through large volumes of information collated from recruiters as well as prospective candidates.

By analyzing data from both sides of the table, such platforms can accurately track market trends, highlight the existing skills gap, and identify emerging skills requirements. They can also recommend relevant self-learning certification courses to jobseekers, based on their specific skillsets, interests, and career aspirations.Such self-paced learning allows professionals to take charge of their career trajectory and become better prepared for future job requirements.

Intel’s Co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1975 that“the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years”. Made almost half a century ago, this prediction is still defining the current direction of the microprocessor fabrication industry. The time is ripe to make a similar prediction for jobs. Professionals will need to significantly upskill and reskill themselves 2-3 times every five years in order to remain relevant in the job market. There simply is no other option.

As new technologies are created at a faster and faster pace and as they are adopted at record speeds by markets - it’s fair to say that future could be coming at a breakneck speed.