The CEO Forum Group Magazine Business 2023 (1) - Flipbook - Page 13
CEO, Cognizant
past. Every new technology wave has always created
more productivity, has created more prosperity. How
do you make sure that you form that bridge to the
future so that our clients can actually transition to the
future more quickly and remain relevant and more
competitive in their respective industries? I’m excited
about how the partnership is going to evolve with our
clients in a variety of ways, unique ways where we cocreate with them in many different formats.
Ravi, I know you have a unique philosophy on the
integration of diversity and AI. Talk about that.
Robert, it’s a very interesting topic. Take a look at
what’s happened since the Industrial Revolution.
Since the Industrial Revolution, work has been defined
in the workplace as problem solving. Workplaces
and workforce were all intertwined. The pandemic
decoupled work, workplaces, and workforce. Now,
generative AI and AI technologies are going to
accelerate that process of virtualizing work. They’re
going to accelerate the process of platformizing work.
They’re going to accelerate the process of taking
problem solving away from humans and moving it
to machines so that the new endeavor for humans is
going to be finding more purposeful problems.
Diversity is not just about traditional demographics
like gender, color, sexual orientation or age. It is also
about cognitive diversity. You’re going to need to
identify problem finders through more diversity in
workplace, because the workplace is already flooded
with problem solvers. With machines and people
working together, you’re going to need to find or
cultivate new cognitive diversity in workplaces.
Since work is going to be virtualized, more work will
be accessible to a more diverse demographic. You will
no longer need the same academic degrees; instead
you need skills. Degrees created the digital divide.
Education has been probably the most expensive
industry over the last few years; in fact, in the last
20 years the cost of an undergraduate degree has
gone up by 150%, while the cost of inflation is 50%.
So we’ve created a very unnatural divide between
people who have access to education and people who
do not have access to a four-year undergrad degree.
I call it the half-life of skills. The half-life of skills
has gone down. In the future, you might not need
undergraduate degrees as much, which means you
can potentially access good jobs without that degree,
which will mean better diversity and better inclusivity
in accessing jobs.
“We could use generative AI
to bridge the digital divide,
leading to more diversity.”
I think we can shape the future of work using
generative AI, virtualization of work, more
cognitive diversity, access of jobs to a more
diverse demographic, and providing job access to
underserved communities that have unequal access
to education. I also previously spoke about how
generative AI is going to hand over the agency of
technology to end users, which means you don’t
need to be a coder to be a part of a tech revolution.
You don’t necessarily need to know technology to
leverage technology. So I believe if we play this well,
Robert, we could use generative AI to bridge the
digital divide, leading to more diversity.
We’re in the fourth phase of the corporation. Phase
one was Alfred Sloan creating General Motors
and the concept of the modern corporation. Phase
two was in the 1950s when Peter Drucker codified
management. In the 1980s, phase three was the
Japanese influence bringing in team and quality.
And then the fourth phase was in the early 2000s,
which was integrating purpose with profit. So to a
visionary like you, what will be the next phase of
business?
Robert, the next phase of business should be weaving
work into our lives. I’ve never said this before so you
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