Dr. Sanjay Sarma is CEO, President, and Dean of the Asia School of Business (ASB) and a professor of mechanical engineering, Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This is the assessment of Dr. Sanjay Sarma who is CEO, President, and Dean of the Asia School of Business (ASB) and a professor of mechanical engineering in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a leading authority in AI, Internet of Things, and Education.
ASB, established in 2015 by Bank Negara Malaysia in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management, aims to be a premier business school that develops transformative and principled leaders who will contribute to the advancement of the emerging world, particularly in Asia.
The rapid progression in the development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) can no longer be denied or ignored, and Philippine corporations will have to grab this by the horns and turn it into an opportunity or be left behind.
Dr. Sanjay Sarma is CEO, President, and Dean of the Asia School of Business (ASB) and a professor of mechanical engineering, Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This is the assessment of Dr. Sanjay Sarma who is CEO, President, and Dean of the Asia School of Business (ASB) and a professor of mechanical engineering in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a leading authority in AI, Internet of Things, and Education.
ASB, established in 2015 by Bank Negara Malaysia in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management, aims to be a premier business school that develops transformative and principled leaders who will contribute to the advancement of the emerging world, particularly in Asia.
“In the Philippines, AI is going to replace jobs. So, let’s accept that. And the Philippines should become the country that leads the world in how to use AI, in call centers. It will put some people out of work, but at least you define the rules of how it works,” said Sarma.
He noted that, “in the Philippines, it has to be a national effort. The government needs to be really, really, 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.”
Sarma pointed out that AI is developing at an unprecedented pace and will be everywhere soon. “I’m telling you. It’s not 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 explained. 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 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, they had to become cognitive. They did the more cognitively advanced tasks and ATMs did the cash. But it took 10 years. 15 years. The problem here is 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,” he pointed out. To adapt to changes that will be brought by the use of AI, Sarma said local industries like the business process outsourcing sector will need to upgrade more into the technology space.
“You can’t be at this 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. So, you have to go higher up in the cognitive stock to go higher,” he said.
Sarma said local service industry workers will have to do the things that technology cannot. “See what can you do that GPT cannot do. GPT cannot negotiate with you. GPD can’t do any planning. GPT can’t really do dispute resolution. GPT can’t calm an angry customer.
So you have to really figure out what the technology can do and what humans can do, that the technology can’t. And you’re to develop human capital in those directions,” he added. “It takes a very careful analysis of the local labor economy.
The labor market, what are people doing? Combined with a very careful analysis of the needs of companies and an education or development, but policy incentives, institutions, to let people move from where they are to where they need to be,” he also said.
This article was originally published on Manila Bulletin.