Dec 23 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)
The Technology Of Being Human
Vishal Sikka
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The writer is CEO of Infosys.
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Here's a unique opportunity to leverage individual talent and collective capability through tech advances
In Being Digital, his prescient book on the new cosmos into which we are hurtling, Nicho las Negroponte talks of the transformation of the world from atoms to bits, a transformation he terms irrevocable, irreplaceable and exponential. Twenty years after the book was first published, we are witnessing that prediction in full flow.It is my deeply held belief that this digital evolution has now set the stage for us to embark on a human revolution. We can see a renaissance of our humanity driven by a host of powerful new technologies and concepts from artificial intelligence to design thinking, from a pervasive connectedness to ubiquitous authoring which will converge to amplify our potential, capability and experience.
This empowerment will help us to not just solve but uncover new challenges and new demands that lie unarticulated, and are the very essence of further opportunity .
The term `human revolution' uttered in the same breath as `technology' might at first seem counterintuitive to those who see the wave of technological disruption, ushered in by everything ranging from driverless cars to teller-less banks, as the force precipitating human irrelevance. This argument is becoming more strident with advancements in automation and artificial intelligence.As someone who was tutored by the pioneers of artificial intelligence at Stanford, i can see that it is the lack of understanding of this domain which is the cause of such pessimism.
But this is nothing new. Whenever technology reaches a certain maturity, it is often greeted with some doubt and more than some despair about its impact on human endeavour. Most times these fears have been unfounded, a case in point being the Industrial Revolution, which was supposed to take away jobs and make people redundant on a very large scale. The reason why the outcomes have defied dire prognostication is that great technologies always bring with them the power of great possibilities, and have proven their ability to amplify people and societies time and time again.
While i am convinced that the world is poised at the cusp of incredible opportunity to leverage technology and augment individual talent and collective capability, there is the other position in the argument – that robots and digital agents will displace significant numbers of both blueand white-collar workers, leading to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable and breakdowns in the social order. I don’t subscribe to these notions.
While our perception and our physical abilities may be finite and hence can be augmented and even replaced, our humanity, our imagination and our creativity have no limits. That’s why it must be our pursuit to become more human and to have technology enable us to further enhance our humanity. To try and halt the march of technology-enabled progress would be as pointless now as the Luddites’ protests against mechanised looms back in the 1810s. And it is going to take a human revolution for us to truly leverage this great opportunity of our times.
We can do that on the basis of, first, education – our foundation to build the knowledge and skills we’ll need in the world ahead. Second, on the basis of our ability to draw inspiration from a strong and purposeful ethos that feeds on imagination and creativity. Third, on the basis of our entrepreneurship the ability to find and solve the challenges of our times with unwavering commitment coupled with the energy we need to surmount obstacles, both real and virtual. `Learnability' or our ability to learn has always been and will remain at the heart of our continued relevance and success. We must renew our existing skills, constantly improve. And improve our ability to improve. While learning new things.And practising new things. Driven by a commitment to lifelong learning.
Our ethos will determine our choices.We must make it our endeavour to do more fundamental work, more of the important things, the purposeful things, especially ones where value isn't obvious in the 90-day rhythms and the lenses of traditional financial metrics that seem to consume most large companies.
It is also crucial that we find and nurture the entrepreneur in each of us creating a future which is driven by innovation. A future where our humanity is not replaced by drones or artificial intelligence but is augmented and amplified by it.
When we look back on our history , we see that we have done this before. Shortly after the war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, India suffered from a substantial food shortage. Foodgrains were being imported. Food rations were not uncommon. Then the Green Revolution happened. And the result is that India is today one of the biggest food exporters in several categories. And all of this has happened in less than one generation on the basis of technology .
As i write this sitting in the warm sunshine and clean air of Brisbane, Australia, i cannot help but think that the best times for humankind, the best quality of living, the best advances, the best learning, the best experiences, and even better, the best reasons to live lie ahead of us.Technology will help us create a better future for us. And far from making us irrelevant, help us become more human. Thus shall begin the great human revolution... The writer is CEO of Infosys.
This empowerment will help us to not just solve but uncover new challenges and new demands that lie unarticulated, and are the very essence of further opportunity .
The term `human revolution' uttered in the same breath as `technology' might at first seem counterintuitive to those who see the wave of technological disruption, ushered in by everything ranging from driverless cars to teller-less banks, as the force precipitating human irrelevance. This argument is becoming more strident with advancements in automation and artificial intelligence.As someone who was tutored by the pioneers of artificial intelligence at Stanford, i can see that it is the lack of understanding of this domain which is the cause of such pessimism.
But this is nothing new. Whenever technology reaches a certain maturity, it is often greeted with some doubt and more than some despair about its impact on human endeavour. Most times these fears have been unfounded, a case in point being the Industrial Revolution, which was supposed to take away jobs and make people redundant on a very large scale. The reason why the outcomes have defied dire prognostication is that great technologies always bring with them the power of great possibilities, and have proven their ability to amplify people and societies time and time again.
While i am convinced that the world is poised at the cusp of incredible opportunity to leverage technology and augment individual talent and collective capability, there is the other position in the argument – that robots and digital agents will displace significant numbers of both blueand white-collar workers, leading to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable and breakdowns in the social order. I don’t subscribe to these notions.
While our perception and our physical abilities may be finite and hence can be augmented and even replaced, our humanity, our imagination and our creativity have no limits. That’s why it must be our pursuit to become more human and to have technology enable us to further enhance our humanity. To try and halt the march of technology-enabled progress would be as pointless now as the Luddites’ protests against mechanised looms back in the 1810s. And it is going to take a human revolution for us to truly leverage this great opportunity of our times.
We can do that on the basis of, first, education – our foundation to build the knowledge and skills we’ll need in the world ahead. Second, on the basis of our ability to draw inspiration from a strong and purposeful ethos that feeds on imagination and creativity. Third, on the basis of our entrepreneurship the ability to find and solve the challenges of our times with unwavering commitment coupled with the energy we need to surmount obstacles, both real and virtual. `Learnability' or our ability to learn has always been and will remain at the heart of our continued relevance and success. We must renew our existing skills, constantly improve. And improve our ability to improve. While learning new things.And practising new things. Driven by a commitment to lifelong learning.
Our ethos will determine our choices.We must make it our endeavour to do more fundamental work, more of the important things, the purposeful things, especially ones where value isn't obvious in the 90-day rhythms and the lenses of traditional financial metrics that seem to consume most large companies.
It is also crucial that we find and nurture the entrepreneur in each of us creating a future which is driven by innovation. A future where our humanity is not replaced by drones or artificial intelligence but is augmented and amplified by it.
When we look back on our history , we see that we have done this before. Shortly after the war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, India suffered from a substantial food shortage. Foodgrains were being imported. Food rations were not uncommon. Then the Green Revolution happened. And the result is that India is today one of the biggest food exporters in several categories. And all of this has happened in less than one generation on the basis of technology .
As i write this sitting in the warm sunshine and clean air of Brisbane, Australia, i cannot help but think that the best times for humankind, the best quality of living, the best advances, the best learning, the best experiences, and even better, the best reasons to live lie ahead of us.Technology will help us create a better future for us. And far from making us irrelevant, help us become more human. Thus shall begin the great human revolution... The writer is CEO of Infosys.
