New Delhi: As countries work on Large Language Models (LLMs) and build data centres to stay in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race, a new problem waits around the corner: quickly disappearing employment. ‘The AI threat to Indian jobs is getting increasingly real,’ the Financial Times (FT) reports.
In the India Business Briefing newsletter for FT, author and journalist Veena Venugopal writes that India’s main employment sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, finance and education, face serious threat from the evolution of AI. She adds that India’s leading companies have already reduced their workforce by 5-6 percent.
“A report from Goldman Sachs released last week predicts that 8-12 percent of non-agricultural employment in India is at risk of being substituted by artificial intelligence,” the newsletter adds.
Support-level staff are at the highest risk of being replaced by AI, while senior-level managerial roles remain secure, as AI is poised to complement job functions and not replace them.
The strongest example of this new-age threat comes from Karnataka. As Venugopal writes, the state’s chief minister D.K. Shivakumar, in April, said that AI could cut 50 percent of jobs in Bengaluru and elsewhere. “This is a serious number for an industry that employs some 6 million Indians and contributes 7 percent to the GDP,” Venugopal warns.
However, Venugopal highlights, the more worrying aspect of the challenge is that no other sector has come up in India in the last few decades that could be seen as a reliable provider of jobs in place of the IT sector.
India’s IT sector generates more than $300 billion a year in revenue and is “the largest private-sector provider of formal work in the country,” Venugopal writes. “The most visible sector of employment that has emerged in urban India in the past decade or so is, in fact, gig work, which does not bring with it a promise of wealth or value creation.”
Lauren Turner of the BBC reports about the Air India new rule that mandates drug tests for all its pilots. The rule comes after an incident in which a Delhi-bound flight coming from Phuket suddenly lost altitude. The preliminary report revealed that the senior pilot has to retake the substance test after testing positive for marijuana.
Air India Express, airline’s budget-friendly arm, will also subject all its pilots to a drug test from Thursday. “Existing rules require at least 10 percent of pilots to be tested at random,” Turner writes.
Seventeen passengers and crew members were injured when the plane lost about 91 metres in height shortly after departure on 4 August.
“This initiative, which goes beyond regulatory requirements, reflects our determination to uphold the highest standards of safety and professionalism, and to provide reassurance to our passengers, stakeholders and the community at large,” the memo seen by the BBC said.
India’s solar mission has made significant strides that could help unravel some of the Sun’s enduring mysteries. Geeta Pandey of the BBC reports on findings—made by Indian mission Aditya L1—revealed in a recent paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Pandey writes: “One of the most enduring mysteries that has been puzzling scientists forever is how the Sun’s outer atmosphere – the corona – is millions of degrees hotter than its surface. And how does the corona continue to remain so hot despite frequent eruptions during which it loses huge amounts of energy?”
India’s solar mission may have found the answers to this question. Temperatures deep inside the Sun’s core are at 15 million degree Celsius. However, the temperature of the corona, the Sun’s outermost layer, varies from 2 to 40 million degrees.
Prof. R. Ramesh of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), who led the study, told the BBC that there are two factors largely responsible for the inexplicably high temperatures of the corona.
The first factor is the bubbling, boiling motions on the Sun’s surface that constantly generate waves which, as they travel outwards, carry energy to the corona, “a bit like sea waves carrying foam and froth to the shore.”
“The second is the tangled magnetic field lines in the Sun’s atmosphere that constantly snap and then reconnect. Prof Ramesh says a CME occurs when these twisting, looping lines – which resemble braided hair – rupture, throwing out massive clouds of magnetised plasma and gas in space,” the BBC reports.
According to the report, Prof Ramesh told the BBC that the research has set an important benchmark for further studies into the Sun’s energy generation into the atmosphere.
Sadiba Hasan of The New York Times (NYT) writes about India’s ‘It’ girl Diya Joukani and why she is “really that cool”. Diya, who became a viral sensation in November last year for her fashion on the streets of Mumbai, has made her way to global media.
“Diya Joukani struts through a train station in Mumbai, India, wearing baggy jeans and a white embroidered zip-up jacket. Behind her walk four women in colorful saris and salwar kameez, creating the illusion of a spontaneous runway show. The moment isn’t staged, which makes it all the more captivating, especially because of the way Joukani, with her carefully styled look, moves through the world that surrounds her,” Hasan writes.
In her “slice-of-life moments” videos, Joukani displays her characteristic fashion, donning clothes designed by herself, she strolls through Mumbai “herding goats, drinking from a coconut while cruising on a skateboard and sipping chai with street vendors.”
As Hasan describes it, Joukani’s videos achieve something uncommon with their style, music and editing. “Joukani speeds up the footage and sets it to moody songs by artists like Frank Ocean and Ye. Her wavy hair falls below her waist. And she wears clothes she designed for her brand, DiyaDiya, which incorporates traditional aari and zardozi hand-embroidery onto boot-cut, low-rise pants; hooded denim vests; and long, slouchy jean shorts.”
Hasan calls it her signature look. However, why do Joukani’s videos stand out amidst a sea of intellectual slop? The NYT notes that a sense of immediacy and authenticity, while giving viewers a glimpse of her daily life, make her videos “alluring”.
“The videos, which are often filmed by her father, feature the tractor drivers, the chai vendors, the potter, the lamp maker and others in her neighborhood — people Joukani has known for years — and she interacts with them with affection,” Hasan adds.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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