Jim Iyoob, chief customer officer of Etech Global Service, at the 2nd staging of the Outsource2Jamaica Conference, held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre Thursday. (Photo: .Philp Lemonte)

MONTEGO BAY, St James — An executive of a leading global business provider of customer engagement solutions is suggesting that contrary to the strongly held view in some quarters that, artificial intelligence (AI) will result in job cuts, AI will actually create more jobs.

“With the invention of the artificial intelligence and human intelligence aspect, it’s going to create more jobs. It’s going to create jobs because you are going to need data scientists, you are going to need data analysts. As an example, people talk about Amazon; Amazon used a lot of artificial intelligence. If you go to Amazon’s site right now there are 427 openings for data scientists in their company. So artificial intelligence, while it’s great to speed up processes, it’s going to be a job creator with a different skills set, which gives huge opportunities to companies,” Jim Lyoob, chief customer service officer for Etech Global Services, told the Jamaica Observer.

“When you think about artificial intelligence, a lot of these software companies are telling you it’s going to replace people. I strongly disagree – because at the end of the day, a machine can’t be creative.”

Etech is known as a trusted advisor and experienced outsourcer of customer support, sales, technical support, and quality monitoring analytics.

Lyoob conceded that with the advent of AI, humans jobs will be lost, but the number of jobs that will be created outweighs the basic jobs that will be lost.

“There are a lot of studies out there…a lot of people tell me that artificial intelligence is going to replace people, it’s going to replace basic jobs. As a matter of fact, one of the software companies came to me and we have 200 data scientists working for Etech today, and what they have told us is we can reduce your head count by 70 per cent. I disagree 100 per cent. If the job is that automated and can be automated, it’s probably a job that won’t exist in another two to three years,” he declared. “What I found in my 30-year career in this customer experience journey – I will take will over skill any day. If I have an employee who has the will to learn something new, then he or she will be successful when you give them the tools to be successful.”

He recommended that Government train people to fill the posts that will emerge as a result of artificial intelligence.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business-observer-daily-biz/ai-will-create-more-jobs-_162457