By Jatin Matah
The only constant in life is change, and change is inevitable. Whether it be life or things around your life. Some changes are good, and some changes, well, disrupt life.
The invention of the bulb by Thomas Edison was a game changer. But even then I’m sure it would have been taken as more of a disruptor. A change so huge that the naysayers would call it the end of candles, and the end of the jobs of the candlemakers. The candlemakers would have no jobs, and the trade would go out of business.
Well, we have had various iterations in design and in technology of the electric bulbs, from the good old yellow ones to CFL to LED bulbs, but the candles are still here, even though their prices have risen, technology of making them has also changed. We may not depend on them for lighting our rooms, but still very much here. Diwali candles, tea candles, perfumed candles to name a few.
The Game of Disruptors is very old, the very first disruptor would be stone tools found in archeological findings. Even then, I presume, someone’s job would have been taken over by the stone tool, like the humble hammer.
Let us take up a few more examples.
The Wright brothers brought around the biggest change in transportation by making the airplane. Again, changing the way we travel and transport things around. Though road and rail transport are still here. People upskilled and took up jobs in the aviation sector, and they made good money. The locomotive and road transport industry also upskilled to stay abreast with the changing technology and times.
The invention of the tractor, and its replacing the buffaloes and more so the bull from agriculture. The tractor’s job is everything in the field, from transport of farming goods and materials to actually plowing the field. The number of people involved in plowing of those fields had to upskill and move to other sectors like the manufacturing of the tractor or parts thereof! As for bulls and buffaloes, we do see the milk and milk products sector ever growing.
The invention of a calculator, when people said the job of accountants is at stake. Well, quite the opposite. Chartered accountants and the accountants under them are still there, using the calculators and more so MS Office Excel to further reduce the burden of math on themselves. All they did was upskill themselves to learn the use of calculators, and MS office.
The ATM machine is the most convenient mode of getting cash! The cashier of the bank still has his job, and albeit a fancy one with note counting machines by his side and only taking big amounts for withdrawals and deposits.
Plastic money (Debit/ Credit cards), and more so the online money transfer tools (GPay, PayTM, PhonePe… ), we still have the good old paper currency notes around. Even though the rush at ATMs has gone down, the market still got disrupted.
With every iteration, the people in question have had to upskill themselves, keeping within the same parallel or the parallel that got replaced; the keyword there being upskill.
And every iteration of change gets with it more jobs, like manufacturing tractors and tractor parts, or manufacturing the ATM, the R&D involved, and perhaps marketing/advertising and half a dozen more related jobs.
The latest in the Game of disruptors is AI (Artificial Intelligence).
It is a fancy tool, and quite a big disruptor with even software companies claiming that a good amount of code is being written by AI. As a programmer myself, I could bet on it, but at the end of the day, banking on AI for writing complete working software is still a long shot.
Most of AI is still generative AI. You ask a question in the language of your choice, and it responds with its good knowledge, writing articles, content and programming code, creating images and videos.
Will it take away jobs? I think not. It is just another tool, which helps users get things done faster! Scary yes, but to the point of the movie, The Terminator, not quite yet.
It’s just another disruption in the ‘Game of Disrupters’, where people will have to upskill and keep up with the changing times.
(Jatin Matah is a Techpreneur. He is a prolific writer, loves tech and pens his thoughts on social issues.)
