AUTOMATION and artificial intelligence (AI) are going to be a future threat to the country’s business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry as these technologies will affect the employment of workers, particularly those belonging to the lower skills category.
In a recent interview with the BusinessMirror, Thinking Machines Data Science Inc. CEO Stephanie Sy said the country must act fast to address the impact of AI, especially the possible displacement it would create in the BPO sector. Sy said the government must also accelerate in upgrading the skills of Filipinos to become more competitive in the knowledge-process outsourcing (KPO) area.
She explained automation and AI can be “lumped together in terms of losses of jobs”. “It will reduce the low skill jobs in the BPO industry.” Sy expressed the Philippines faces a “huge challenge” to offset the losses from the low skills category.
“The number of higher skill jobs is not going to equal to those reduced skilled jobs. It is really bad,” Sy said. “If we gain 100,000 high-skill jobs and lose 400,000 lose-skill jobs, we are still going to experience a big gab. I want to avoid that situation where we will experience more inequality. So you have to find a way replace those low-skill jobs, give them different things to work on or train them for something up and find ways to use them.”
Nevertheless, Sy said the situation is not gloomy as there are lots of opportunities that people can utilize. For instance, she said people, particularly the youth, should study analytics and data science as the global area is going to absorb huge volume of data in the advent of the Internet of Things.
“The country is experiencing a dearth in data scientists,” Sy said. “It is hard to find the right talent because we don’t teach it in our schools.”
She said she believes the University of the Philippines “produces a lot of good graduates in the College of Engineering”.
The Asian Institute of Management recently announced it will introduce a data science program in response to the growing need for data experts. It is just awaiting the Commission on Higher Education’s approval of the curriculum.
In a separate interview, Information and Communications Technology Undersecretary Monchito Ibrahim said the government has crafted measures to mitigate the impact of AI and automation particularly in the BPO industry. Ibrahim said they are collaborating with the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) to boost the country’s research and development road map. He said they are urging BPOs to retrain their people for higher skills to handle knowledge-based jobs.
Meanwhile, Science Secretary Fortunato de la Peña said AI is a top priority in the government’s research and development agenda. The DOST-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development Deputy (now known as the Innovation Council) has included AI in its development agenda, de la Peña added.