Indian I.T. has survived many a false alarm in the past, but this time around the threat of disruption might just be real. Personalized chat bots are here.
I tried ChatGPT and it is quite amazing. I could do things like (for example) write a program to calculate square root of a number or draft an article on Anti-microbial Resistance in humans - both subjects I know nothing about!
Of course, ChatGPT still cannot do many other things, but this is just the beginning, Difficult to imagine where humanity is headed.
How would such a chat bot which allows to do some tasks etc. Pose threat to IT companies?
Infact chat bots are but technology driven and evolved, so its one of another areas where tech firms involvement is needed for such bots itself to grow…
I agree, but from what I have seen till now, all automations in turn help improve developer/analyst’s productivity.
To give an example, there are workflows which automates data extraction, data operations, update the visualization dashboard (Tableau, PowerBI), attach the file link and share this in an email to the specified recipients in just a few clicks (ideally just a single click)
ChatGPT, if leveraged in the right way would help minimize intellectual effort in manual tasks and help humans spend time on better, more creative things.
Yes, we cannot ignore the risk of reduced IT labor which time will tell. Usually automation paves way for better tasks.
The chatbot doesn’t just do tasks (that’s automation), it can program. Ability to write code is a higher level of intelligence. If machines can code, do we need I.T. companies? Clients can do it themselves. Or at least, what is today a 100-man-day job can become a 10-man-day job. Presently most of the project pricing is decided based on “effort estimates” (billing clients on how much time it takes to write X lines of code). But what happens if much of the code is available off-the-shelf, how will the company justify its pricing - that is the question.
For a set of possible scenarios where every possible scenario either which has happened or thought of is created, solutions can be made with the help of a code, as this is absolute quantification, only numbers are changed. But when each claim is different, something like in an insurance sector, where the applicant can come up with his personal agenda which cannot be thought of and which is made just because it is his legal right and he has a chance of winning, a prior coded model does not work. Randomness cannot be modeled.
Also, tech in itself is wonderful but the creators of that tech may not possess the necessary knowledge to value it, so the behemoths of IT with their cash flows and reserves always have the chance to buy out such tech, along with their in-house R&D.
So I guess as the sector grows, so does the established companies, unless they make grave miscalculations in assessing something, which make them become small.
Client can do it themselves even now. What a chatbot do can be done by an intern or by dime a dozen freelance programmer from sites like Fiverr as well. Companies don’t want just a working code but a code which is fool proof, robust and secure. There are banks which are still running on 90s mainframe software as they don’t want to interrupt tested software. It is still a long way for companies to rely on AI to churn new code. In fact they might need these service companies to try all these. Or better, the service companies themselves will make use of these systems to bring in efficiency and reduce bench strength making them more productive per employee.
Coding as an activity is hardly 1/3rd (actually less than that) of the overall work in any IT project.
Code is written in a business context, business context exists within a larger capability, the capability is at some lifecycle stage, the industry dynamics, competition, and so on. One can automate the bottom layers but it ain’t easy as you navigate the upper layers.
Tech can/will help in productivity, and supplement decision-making but not replace humans for non-repetitive tasks. Case in point - self-driving cars. Despite all the hype for more than a decade now, here is what the flag-bearer Tesla said recently.
Service companies need to embrace these realities. It must be seen as an opportunity than to be threatened.
Every tool that is in existence since decades writes code in background for every customisation. Code is nothing but logic in a different language. These tools also need IT companies for integration and consulting to meet business requirements and customisation…so tech may change, way of coding may change, those who do coding may change but an evolving company/industry may not be directly threatened by it is what I feel…
@Chandragupta sir, very apt example and yes the ability to program at this point of time would cater to certain problem statement, the only caveat is, applications are developed in agile methodology where with iteration, the increments/feature addition/ui enhancements are done based on business context.
For this to be be done by chatgpt, the client would need to describe the problem statement very specifically instruction wise, basically translate a real world case into something a machine or “AI” would understand, this itself is a niche skill for someone to know both things.
Yes, in future there would a very enhanced version of ChatGPT which might even do that.
Reminds of Robot movie where despite the robot being intelligent, doesn’t always understand the context in the way the master would want let’s hope for the best.
If AI can write code, human programmers would still have their job. They would be the ones who ask the AI in the right way about what to write code for. We have to remember that writing code is only one part of programming.
Currently, programmers write in computer language to get stuff done by computers. If AI writes in computer language, programmers will write in human language to interact with the programming AI to get stuff done by computers.
Conservatively, AI would become another tool in the toolkit of programmers. There is no question of replacing programmers. Their work will just become a bit easier to do certain parts of their work.
AI is surely going to replace programmers and quite a few of them. Most programmers in the Indian IT industry write implementation codes. The feature requirements are defined by Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and System Architects. These members take judgment calls based on experience. Everyone at the engineering level implements by writing classes, and functions and calling them.
So they would clearly be replaced by AI writing code.
However, there would be other roles that would be created. People with expertise in understanding how to correctly interact with the APIs. And people for troubleshooting the code as the algorithm is probabilistic and not deterministic.
But the net effect would be a reduction in the work-force. It has been historically noted that innovation has always resulted in capital replacing human labor. I would claim that the purpose of innovation is to replace human labor.
So this time would also be the same. There is going to be a net reduction of work-force.
Actually, historically, innovation resulted in more jobs. Take any innovation, starting with agriculture through industrialization to computers. It is true that the types of jobs change. That is going to happen with the AI as well.
My perspective on the discussion of AI/ChatGPT/Robotic Process Automation is below:
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) : This is used mainly by Non IT sector like Banks, MF industry, Retail industry and any industry for that matter which wants to automate some of their manual business processes and automate to some extent. Generally 50% to 80% automation of the Business process is possible. RPA Bots mimic human actions and can enter data, and do lot of manual activities automatically. It is a Robotic Process which runs on individual machines or on multiple machines.
Though this reduces man power used by those companies, it can create Jobs in IT sector as we have seen in past 5-6 years. This is classified as Digital revenues by many IT companies. It requires RPA developers, Designers and Testers as well.
I will classify Chat Bots also in this category. It certainly reduces human jobs and increase efficiency and margins.
AI/ML/ChatGPT: This is used by IT as well as other industries. If used properly, it can automate certain tasks done by software developers. There are intelligent tools available today as well which can write software code to certain extent and also automate testing. This has already reduced some % of IT jobs in past decade. You can reduce your team size by some percentage, and still get the work done.
ChatGPT could be more smart and intelligent, so it may have some impact on writing software, analyzing complex requirements and suggest suitable algorithm/design approach. I am not sure whether such intelligence is possible or not. But it could be possible and achievable in near term or long term. It may create some jobs where the software developer/designer may need to input problems to it and get the solutions from it or use some API(s).
At the same time, it may reduce number of software designers required for understanding complex problems, suggest suitable design or algorithm or an approach. It can also reduce number of software developers required for IT projects.
The fact is that, any Intelligent Automation if done properly reduces dependency on humans to some extent and it can happen in this case as well.
As far as impact on Sales and Profits of IT companies, I do not think, that it will reduce. In fact, it may create more efficient teams, with substantial work done through Automation, and thus might help to increase operating margins to some extent. In the long term, margins will stabilize to some level.
I may be wrong in my analysis, but this based on my long term experience in IT sector for about 25 years.
Disc : I am an ex-IT professional and trying to understand new technologies and Read about it as much as possible.
When a new machine is invented to automate, we need factories to manufacture that machine. Machine requires sales people, maintenance people, etc. Machine requires operators.
With code/software its different compared to other machinery, as there is no marginal cost of replication. There’s no cost to scale it out to whoever wants it. You just need computational resources.
With due respect to discussions going on here, I think we are over thinking on AI etc. impact on IT industry. First understand what is the role of Indian IT industry. I think above in this thread it’s mentioned and discussed before.
Let’s be more focussed if need to understand IT sector better. Strategies of Indian IT firms, how midcap is differentiating itself, what seperates a company x from Y, what part of IT has more growth, more risks, future roadmap of Indian IT, evolution of Indian IT etc.etc.
let’s hope for the best.