But, artificial intelligence will globally eliminate more jobs than it creates till 2019, says research firm

Artificial intelligence (AI) will create 2.3 million jobs globally and become a positive ‘net job motivator’ by 2020, according to Gartner Inc.

“AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates through 2019, however, Gartner believes that the number of jobs created due to AI in 2020 is sufficient to overcome the deficit,” according to the U.S.-based research and advisory company’s top ten predictions for 2018.

‘1.8 mn jobs in danger’

Gartner forecast that AI would eliminate about 1.8 million jobs by 2019.

“Net job creation or elimination will vary greatly by industry; some industries will experience overall job loss, some industries will experience net job loss for only a few years; and some industries, such as healthcare and education, will never experience net job loss.”

AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning, reasoning, and self-correction. Applications of AI include expert systems, speech recognition and machine vision.

“AI will improve the productivity of many jobs, and used creatively, it has the potential to enrich people’s careers, reimagine old tasks and create new industries,” according to Gartner.

‘Sustainable pace’

Daryl Plummer, vice-president and Gartner Fellow, said chief information officers needed to develop a pace that could be sustained “no matter what the future holds.”

“Technology-based innovation is arriving faster than most organisations can keep up with. Before one innovation is implemented, two others arrive,” Mr. Plummer said. Early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30% by 2021 and five of the top seven digital giants, by 2020, will wilfully “self-disrupt” to create their next leadership opportunity.

“In doing new things, digital giants, such as Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Tencent, are likely to run into situations where their influence has grown so large that it is difficult to create new value scenarios.

“This ultimately leads to self-disruption. In a self-disrupting strategy, disruption arises as intentional intent to get there first, even if it is necessary to disrupt yourself. While this can be risky, a risk of inaction can be even higher.”

‘Spending more on bots’

In another four years, more than 50% of enterprises will be spending more per annum on bots and chatbot creations than traditional mobile app developments and by 2020, Internet of Things will be in 95% of electronics of new product designs. The combination of smartphone management, cloud control and inexpensive enabling modules delivers sophisticated monitoring, management and control with minimal additional cost in the target device, according to Gartner.

“Once this technology emerges, buyers will rapidly gravitate to IoT-capable products, and interest in and demand for IoT-enabled products will rapidly snowball. Every supplier must... make plans to implement IoT technology into its products, for both consumer and business buyers.”

Other predictions include a $1 billion business value for banking industry from the use of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies by 2020 and by the same year, the possibility of AI-driven fake content outpacing AI’s ability to detect it.

“By 2022 most people in mature economies will consume more false information than true information,” and by 2021 40% of IT staff will be “versatilists” holding multiple roles, most of which will be business, rather than technology-related.

“Through 2022, half of all security budgets for IoT will go to fault remediation, recalls and safety failures than protection,” according to Gartner.