IT major Infosys has said that automation and artificial intelligence will certainly reduce jobs as productivity improvement will depend on doing more with less.

“AI and automation will definitely have an impact on the current work that you are doing. There is no doubt about it,” Infosys chief operating officer UB Pravin Rao told BusinessLine. He, however, did not say how many jobs will go away because of AI and automation.

But Rao said that there are newer areas that need to be explored. “The mundane things will lend itself to automation but then it will probably open up more opportunities in newer areas that we never thought about.” He said IoT is a new area but it is at an early stage where cloud was a few year ago. He said there are multiple vectors at play as industry growth is slowing down while there is an increased focus on productivity.

He also pointed out that it is not just the clients who are driving this but services’ companies as well as they look towards using this opportunity to leverage the technology purposefully. “Obviously, for the same kind of work, hiring will decrease. It is less about clients but it is more about our own imagination about the possibilities, how we are well able to use the opportunities.”

He said because of commoditisation and automation, the industry was experiencing a tremendous cost take out. He pointed out that the company itself has its own Infosys automation platform that has now evolved into Mana. Infosys was starting off with fixed price projects and then time and material and other projects.

“So far the results have been encouraging but we still have not reached a point where the automation benefit outpaces the commoditisation that’s happening. Commoditisation is happening much faster than automation. That will take a period of time.”

The other part was about Mana being used for predictive analytics and preventive maintenance, which is finding more users. He said their clients want to know where automation can be used. “When we talk to our clients, they ask they how it can apply in my context. Basically, the client are saying what is the problem I should be looking at solving it. Success and criticality will really depend upon how well we can contextualise it.”

He also said there are legacy issues which the clients are grappling with and these issues need to be sorted out first.

He said the results have been very encouraging not only for Mana but for other software as well which has grown by 43 per cent on a small base. “We still have a long way to go as it is a $10-billion business. For it to make a material impact, it will take some time.”