Raphael John-Lall

While ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) and ro­bot­ics will lead to un­em­ploy­ment in T&T, the pos­i­tive im­pact of their in­tro­duc­tion in­to busi­ness places will in­evitably out­weigh the neg­a­tive ef­fects.

That is the po­si­tion of the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion’s (ECA) CEO, Ronald Ram­lo­gan.

The ECA is the largest as­so­ci­a­tion of em­ploy­ers in T&T.

Last week, restau­rant own­ers in T&T told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that tech­nolo­gies in these ar­eas will trans­form the way busi­ness is done lo­cal­ly.

They all agreed that AI and ro­bot­ics will lead to un­em­ploy­ment

“It would be naïve of any­one to be­lieve that the in­te­gra­tion of AI and Ro­bot­ics in­to work­places in T&T will not re­sult in some dis­place­ment and un­em­ploy­ment. The ev­i­dence al­ready sug­gests that some jobs will be at risk due to the in­creas­ing use of new tech­nolo­gies in work­places.

“How­ev­er, while some jobs may be­come re­dun­dant, oth­er types of jobs will be cre­at­ed, which is why we need to con­tex­tu­alise this with­in a skills-based frame­work in­stead of sole­ly a tech­no­log­i­cal one. In the short term, we may find that the ad­vent of new types of jobs may not be suf­fi­cient to match job loss­es, af­ter all, it takes time to re-skill and re-tool,” Ram­lo­gan told the Busi­ness Guardian in a state­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­lo­gan, the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum sug­gests it can take any­where from two months to one year to ac­quire new skills in emerg­ing pro­fes­sions de­pend­ing on whether it is soft skills or high­ly tech­ni­cal skills in ar­eas such as prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, da­ta man­age­ment, AI and cloud com­put­ing.

“The fact is, ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing and life­long learn­ing must now be at the core of peo­ple man­age­ment and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment to keep pace with the shift that is oc­cur­ring. This means that both the in­di­vid­ual, as well as or­gan­i­sa­tions, would do well to in­vest in con­tin­u­ous train­ing and de­vel­op­ment.”

Ram­lo­gan al­so said that AI tech­nol­o­gy means that knowl­edge can be sim­u­lat­ed, au­to­mat­ed, and out­sourced, which is al­ready hap­pen­ing.

“How­ev­er, the same can­not be eas­i­ly said for cer­tain soft skills such as crit­i­cal think­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty, peo­ple man­age­ment, emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, de­ci­sion-mak­ing and ne­go­ti­a­tion. Here is one ex­am­ple. Us­ing Chat­G­PT, a hu­man re­source pro­fes­sion­al can now gen­er­ate a job de­scrip­tion from scratch with­in a mat­ter of sec­onds, a task that usu­al­ly takes hours. Does this mean that the fin­ished prod­uct is per­fect? What the hu­man re­source and man­age­r­i­al pro­fes­sion­al now has to do is crit­i­cal­ly as­sess this AI-gen­er­at­ed prod­uct to en­sure that it is con­gru­ent to the unique con­text and cul­ture of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Stream­lin­ing busi­ness

Ram­lo­gan said he firm­ly be­lieves that these ad­vance­ments do in­deed pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es to stream­line op­er­a­tions and im­prove how, when and where ser­vices are de­liv­ered and prod­ucts are sold, in some cas­es re­sult­ing in lean­er and more ag­ile or­gan­i­sa­tion struc­tures.

“The re­search is demon­strat­ing that the adop­tion of these forms of tech­nol­o­gy can gen­er­ate mas­sive re­turns on in­vest­ments. How­ev­er, tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion will vary ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try and com­pa­ny size. More­over, this is a de­ci­sion that is not or should not, be tak­en glibly. Busi­ness­es should con­sid­er their strate­gic ob­jec­tives – whether in the short to medi­um term or even long term and how such tech­nolo­gies fit in­to those ob­jec­tives. Look at how their busi­ness­es are cur­rent­ly de­signed and struc­tured and the re­lat­ed cy­ber-se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er risks that tech­nol­o­gy will ul­ti­mate­ly in­clude.”

He al­so called for an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that pre­pares stu­dents for the new work­place that is tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven.

“If we are se­ri­ous about im­prov­ing pro­fes­sion­al re­silience and fu­ture-proof­ing our­selves as tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment and adop­tion con­tin­ues, we need to crit­i­cal­ly as­sess our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and con­sid­er how we are adapt­ing what we teach to our cur­rent and fu­ture re­al­i­ties. Stud­ies have shown that two out of every three chil­dren who are in pri­ma­ry school right now will work in a new type of job that does not even ex­ist as yet. We are there­fore faced with the re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of a widen­ing skills gap.”

Ram­lo­gan al­so en­cour­aged all stake­hold­ers to get to­geth­er to dis­cuss this is­sue as well as oth­er is­sues.

“We can­not un­der­score enough the vi­tal role that Gov­ern­ments and oth­er stake­hold­ers – em­ploy­ers, labour, acad­e­mia etc will have in this de­vel­op­men­tal dis­course. So­cial di­a­logue is key, and we can­not avoid this im­por­tant so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that the rights sys­tems and stan­dards are in place for this gen­er­a­tion, and oth­ers to come, to have a chance to suc­ceed. This must al­so in­clude labour leg­is­la­tion and poli­cies.”

Pro­tect work­ers

Lec­tur­er in trade union stud­ies at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Trevor John­son, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian ac­knowl­edged that tech­nol­o­gy will dis­place many jobs, but he said that all sec­tors must adapt to the evolv­ing world of work.

“In 2019, the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused on ‘The Fu­ture of Work’ as one of its ma­jor ar­eas of in­ter­ests and this en­com­passed how the work­place was chang­ing by the in­tro­duc­tion of AI and oth­er forms of tech­nol­o­gy.

“While some pre­dic­tions vary, there was con­sen­sus in the re­search that by the year 2030 at least 60 per cent of the jobs that now ex­ist will longer be on the world of work radar. In fact, the ob­ser­va­tion is that 20 per cent of the jobs that ex­ist­ed in the year 2000 have al­ready dis­ap­peared or are near­ing ex­tinc­tion. Jobs like clerk/typ­ist, re­cep­tion­ist, or­der­ly, bus con­duc­tor, and check­er are ei­ther gone or on the en­dan­gered list of jobs.”

He said the glob­al union labour fed­er­a­tions have been track­ing the fu­ture of work and the de­ploy­ment of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ro­bot­ics in the work­place for al­most two decades now.

“This is par­tic­u­lar­ly ev­i­dent in the ser­vice sec­tors such as bank­ing and fi­nance, the avi­a­tion in­dus­try, com­merce and shop­ping and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions to name a few. Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of ser­vices in bank­ing for ex­am­ple have be­come so com­mon­place. In­deed, it is be­com­ing an in­creas­ing ex­pec­ta­tion to call an or­gan­i­sa­tion and not be able to in­ter­act with a hu­man be­ing but rather some in­tel­li­gent voice-ac­ti­vat­ed plat­form giv­ing cod­ed re­spons­es to your in­quiries.”

Speak­ing about T&T, he said the lo­cal trade unions and trade union fed­er­a­tions have not on­ly been pay­ing at­ten­tion to this, but in sev­er­al col­lec­tive agree­ments there are claus­es that seek to ad­dress the reg­u­la­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy be­ing in­tro­duced in­to the work­place.

“The aim is not to re­strict new tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tions but rather to en­sure the pro­tec­tion of work­ers and their rights. It may be said that em­ploy­ers have rights to in­tro­duce new tech­nol­o­gy, but work­ers al­so have rights as a con­se­quence of tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion.”

John­son said what­ev­er tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tions are in­tro­duced, work­ers must be pro­tect­ed.

“More and more or­gan­i­sa­tions are re­quir­ing work­ers to sub­mit bio­da­ta such as their fin­ger­prints, eye im­ages, etc. which are used to ac­cess the com­pound of the or­gan­i­sa­tion or oth­er ar­eas. Con­cerns have emerged over the years about where em­ploy­ees’ da­ta is stored and who it might be shared with. Vi­o­la­tion of work­ers’ pri­va­cy is a key con­cern with the in­tro­duc­tion of AI. Ro­bots re­plac­ing hu­man be­ings rais­es con­cerns about the qual­i­ty of jobs in present and fu­ture labour mar­kets.”

He added that there has to be a con­sid­er­a­tion for so­cial and eco­nom­ic eco­log­i­cal bal­ance, since if too many jobs are lost to AI and they are not re­placed by vi­able and sus­tain­able jobs then the eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­bal­ance cre­at­ed can eas­i­ly cre­ate a so­cial ex­plo­sion.

“At the May 1, May Day ob­ser­vances ear­li­er this week by the labour move­ment, one key point high­light­ed was the ob­vi­ous lack of sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple who have tak­en the time and made the sac­ri­fice to cer­ti­fy them­selves and now can­not find em­ploy­ment.”

He con­clud­ed by say­ing that in 2017 UNI Glob­al Union called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a glob­al con­ven­tion on eth­i­cal ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.