AI & Human Skills: Jayant Chaudhary at Davos

Davos, Jan 23 (PTI) Artificial Intelligence may be doing a lot of work already but the world would still need 'head, heart and hands' of a human, Union Minister Jayant Chaudhary said on Thursday.

Speaking during a session on 'Reskilling for the intelligent age' during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting here, the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister also said dynamism is the currency that all businesses are asking for today.

On a lighter note, the minister said he would call Artificial Intelligence amorphic or shapeless because artificial in the Indian context means 'naqli' or not real.

Chaudhary said India is already working on training its young talent for future requirements.

My task is to break the silos and our mandate is to skill our future generation from the school level with skills that could be needed in the future anywhere in the world, he added.

I don't want a situation when a trained worker from India comes to Europe and he or she is told that he or she knows nothing, Chaudhary said.

He also said personally every day is a day of reskilling for him.

"I was in opposition and now I'm in government. My political constituency was farmers and now my job is skill development and school education," he said.

With businesses now investing over USD 240 billion annually in AI and digital infrastructure, the lack of skills remains the top barrier to unlocking the full potential of digital transformation.

The session, also comprising of CEOs from various industries, deliberated on what collaborative effort is needed to bridge the skills gaps and unlock the benefits for competitiveness, growth and productivity.

Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur said people are retiring and new skills that are required are not readily available and everyone needs to work to solve this issue.

In our business, humans are required a lot to make right judgments even if we use more and more AI tools in our work process, he said.

Pearson CEO Omar Abbosh said AI is doing a brilliant job but we still need to teach the machine.