India IT Embraces AI and You Should Feel Dead Scared

TCS is attempting to build its own Github Copilot alternative, which is touted to be used for enterprise code generation, the company COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam said in a recent interaction with Economics Times. 

As per him, while the project is at an initial stage, the company is looking to harness the vast internal code, data and resources TCS already has access to. The solution will be built through in-house LLM algorithms. It appears that this development is likely to be akin to the GitHub Copilot, but the model will be trained on its own data.

“The focus is really to build models and using those models, generate the code that can be deployed,” he said. He said if TCS wants to provide secure and contextual generative AI solutions to accelerate client projects, it cannot depend only on multiple large language tools from different providers but should have its own solution.

The announcement comes weeks after Analytics India Magazine reported that Infosys is planning to embrace generative AI along with the revised training of freshers to meet the growing demand for AI professionals in the IT sector.  

Could it be possible that TCS is looking to replace its employees with AI, given the recent announcement about its development of a GitHub Copilot alternative for enterprise code generation? There’s some indication in that respect. Last year, the IT giant witnessed a total reduction of 2,197 headcounts while its attrition rate stood at 21.3%. 

While Ankur Kothari, Co-founder of Automation Anywhere believes that “Automation allows companies to do more with less, enabling them to leverage new opportunities and create new roles that were not possible before,” the emphasis on ‘do more with less,’ will always be there.

Where west is headed

While the boardroom of Indian IT is still discussing the possibility and potential of generative AI in their sector, the Western counterparts have already started adopting the GAI (generative AI). Last week, IBM shocked the world with the announcement that the company would be ‘replacing the workers' with AI. 

As per Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, the hiring in back-office functions, such as human resources, will be suspended or slowed. These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers, Krishna said. “I could easily see 30% (7,800) of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”

Recently, IBM's Red Hat also announced a series of layoffs, with a significant number of individuals from the HR and management departments being affected. This sector is particularly susceptible to replacement by AI, making the news all the more noteworthy.

Additionally, part of any reduction would include not replacing roles vacated by attrition, as per an IBM spokesperson. 

In a similar vein, following the elimination of approximately 27,000 positions, Amazon's CEO also acknowledged that the company will experience a more restrained approach to hiring in certain areas. "As our internal teams assess the priorities of our customers, they have made strategic decisions that may have resulted in downsizing, relocating personnel to new initiatives, or even creating new positions when the requisite skills are not currently possessed by our existing staff," he had said.

West Admits it to be True

One trend that we can quickly observe is that all major tech companies are openly discussing their plans to reduce hiring while adopting AI technology. However, Indian IT firms are less forthcoming on the matter. For example, Infosys puts out statements such as "coding is much more structured than natural language, leading to more opportunities in data engineering and pipeline creation," and "AI-driven solutions can help clients streamline processes and cut costs by as much as 60% to 70%." However, the company does not mention anything about the potential job reductions resulting from these changes.

Similarly, while it is widely accepted that employees in HR & management are likely to be the first ones to fall, with many companies reducing their roles, Zoho told AIM that they don't see AI replacing roles anytime in the near future. As per them, AI will enhance the productivity of employees and help them be more productive at work by letting them focus on problems that require human intervention rather than redundant and mundane tasks. 

Looking at the situation from far behind, it seems like that when it comes to job losses, Indian IT is trying to bury its head in the sand, while also trying to ride the wind by putting out statements here and there on Generative AI.  IT analyst and CEO of EIIRTrend, Pareekh Jain, also commented on the trend, stating that this year, Generative AI is the buzzword. He doesn’t believe anything impactful will come out of it in a couple of years.