Microsoft Sacks, Replaces Dozens of Journalists with AI Software - Report

Technology giant Microsoft has reportedly sacked dozens of journalists in favour of artificial intelligence (AI) software. It is to be noted these reportedly sacked journos weren't involved in producing or writing original content/news but were involved in editorial and curation activities like selecting stories to publish, changing headlines.

Microsoft has decided to replace the staff who maintain the news homepages on Microsoft’s MSN website and its Edge browser because "robots can now do their jobs", reported The Guardian. About 27 employees of PA Media (formerly the Press Association), which is in a contract with Microsoft, use to select, edit and curate news articles on MSN homepages. These were told on Thursday that they would lose their jobs in a month’s time.

These about-to-be-sacked employees were told that Microsoft’s decision to end the contract with PA Media was taken at short notice as part of a global shift away from humans in favour of automated updates for news.

Stating a quote from one of the staff members who worked on the Microsoft curation team, the Guardian report said, "I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am -- AI has taken my job."

The team member then further said that the decision to replace humans with software was risky, as the existing staff were careful to stick to “very strict editorial guidelines” which ensured that users were not presented with violent or inappropriate content when opening their browser, of particular importance for younger users.

An another report from the Seattle Times said that about 50 contract news producers will lose their jobs by the end of June though the company but will still retain a team of journalists working full time.

To recall, in January 2017 Indian software giant Infosys had released 8,000-9,000 employees in one year of time because of automation of lower-end jobs, which was confirmed by the company's human resources head Krishnamurthy Shankar.

In 2018, Demand for AI and Robotics Professionals To Rise By 50-60%

Last month, an Intel report predicted that 70% of Indian organizations will deploy artificial intelligence enabled solutions by end of 2019, which in other words also predicted that India will create more jobs for artificial intelligence and robotics professionals.

Now, with start of fresh year 2018 human resource and search experts estimate a 50-60% higher demand for AI and robotics professionals in 2018 even as machines take over repetitive manual work.

“Machines are taking over repetitive tasks. Robotics, AI, big data, and analytics will be competencies that will be in great demand,” said Shakun Khanna, senior director at Oracle for the Asia-Pacific region.

According to a recruitment startup Belong, there are nearly 7,000 to 10,000 Data Scientists in India currently. Notably, Demand for professionals in the realm of data analysis, including data scientists, have grown by almost 76% in the past few years in AI.

The demand is at the entry level as well as middle to senior ranks across sectors such as business, financial services and insurance (BFSI), e-commerce, startups, business process outsourcing (BPO), information technology (IT), pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and retail.

According to experts, there’s an acute demand-supply mismatch for AI talent across industries. Candidates for AI roles related to natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, and machine learning are thin on the ground, according to the Belong Talent Supply Index. The ratio of the number of people to jobs in deep learning is 0.53, while for machine learning it’s 0.63 and for NLP it’s 0.71.

Only 4% of AI professionals in India have worked on cutting-edge technologies such as deep learning and neural networks, the key ingredients in building advanced AI-related solutions, said Kaul.

The above development was first published in ET Tech.

AI professionals with 10+ years of experience gets $300,000 to $500,000 along with stock options, while in India AI professionals with same experience gets ₹60 lakhs to ₹1.5 crore, according to Belong report.

To cope with shortage of AI professionals in India, Indian collges and educational institutions must include different facets of AI family to their curriculum.

In October 2017, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) has had launched a professional course on ‘Foundations for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning'.

Other academic institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Kharagpur and Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru also have specialised disciplines or centres for artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Last year in October, a report by Gartner also said that artificial intelligence would add 2.3 million jobs by 2020.

Additionally, an another report published last month predicted that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could add USD 957 billion to the Indian economy by changing the nature of work to create better outcomes for businesses and society.

Artificial Intelligence To Add 2.3 Mn Jobs By 2020: Gartner

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an intrusive part of our lives. From aviation to writing to shopping, AI has slowly entered various verticals of our lives and made them faster and better. But, at what cost?

According to U.S.-based research and advisory firm Gartner, while AI will add 2.3 million jobs globally to become a positive ‘net job motivator’ by the year 2020, but it will also end up eliminating more jobs than it creates through 2019. However, here’s the silver line. The firm predicts that the number of jobs created due to AI in 2020 will be able to overcome the deficit. The predictions were revealed during Gartner’s top ten predictions for next year.

So, the maths goes something like this. Gartner believes that AI will create 2.3 million jobs by 2020, but before that it will takeaway a whopping 1.8 million jobs by 2019. That means, overall, the number of jobs being added to the global economy by 2020 will just be around 0.5 million jobs.

The firm further highlighted that the net job creation or elimination will vary greatly industry to industry. While some industries might have to go through overall job loss, others might have to face net job loss for only a few years; and some others, such as healthcare and education, might not have to experience net job loss at all.



Earlier this year, we reported how a survey had predicted that there is a 50% chance that Artificial Intelligence will surpass human intelligence in all areas within a period of about 45 years. The study conducted by researcher Katja Grace at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and a team involved surveying a total of 1,634 artificial intelligence researchers from all around the world.

While Gartner put forth interesting facts about AI job creation and elimination, it did say that the emerging technology if used properly and safely has the potential of changing the world as we see it. According to it, “AI will improve the productivity of many jobs, and used creatively, it has the potential to enrich people’s careers, reimagine old tasks and create new industries.”

Daryl Plummer, vice-president and Gartner Fellow, also gave out a friendly advice to chief information officers of all leading tech giants of the world and said that there’s an urgent need for them to develop a pace that could be sustained “no matter what the future holds.”

According to Plummer, currently, technology-based innovation is arriving faster than most organisations can keep up with. Before one innovation is even properly implemented, two others arrive at the block.

He further adds, “In doing new things, digital giants, such as Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Tencent, are likely to run into situations where their influence has grown so large that it is difficult to create new value scenarios.”

“This ultimately leads to self-disruption. In a self-disrupting strategy, disruption arises as intentional intent to get there first, even if it is necessary to disrupt yourself. While this can be risky, a risk of inaction can be even higher.”

Coming back to AI and job scenario, the Indian government isn’t so much encouraging of the technology. Recently, the Indian government had announced that they aren’t open to driverless cars operating in the country as they believe it will result in loss of jobs, something which goes against their ideology. Instead, the government said they would rather promote the trend of electric cars, something which will save fuel and jobs at the same time.

This development was first reported in The Hindu.

[Image: MIT Sloan Management Review]

Artificial Intelligence To Add 2.3 Mn Jobs By 2020: Gartner

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an intrusive part of our lives. From aviation to writing to shopping, AI has slowly entered various verticals of our lives and made them faster and better. But, at what cost?

According to U.S.-based research and advisory firm Gartner, while AI will add 2.3 million jobs globally to become a positive ‘net job motivator’ by the year 2020, but it will also end up eliminating more jobs than it creates through 2019. However, here’s the silver line. The firm predicts that the number of jobs created due to AI in 2020 will be able to overcome the deficit. The predictions were revealed during Gartner’s top ten predictions for next year.

So, the maths goes something like this. Gartner believes that AI will create 2.3 million jobs by 2020, but before that it will takeaway a whopping 1.8 million jobs by 2019. That means, overall, the number of jobs being added to the global economy by 2020 will just be around 0.5 million jobs.

The firm further highlighted that the net job creation or elimination will vary greatly industry to industry. While some industries might have to go through overall job loss, others might have to face net job loss for only a few years; and some others, such as healthcare and education, might not have to experience net job loss at all.



Earlier this year, we reported how a survey had predicted that there is a 50% chance that Artificial Intelligence will surpass human intelligence in all areas within a period of about 45 years. The study conducted by researcher Katja Grace at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and a team involved surveying a total of 1,634 artificial intelligence researchers from all around the world.

While Gartner put forth interesting facts about AI job creation and elimination, it did say that the emerging technology if used properly and safely has the potential of changing the world as we see it. According to it, “AI will improve the productivity of many jobs, and used creatively, it has the potential to enrich people’s careers, reimagine old tasks and create new industries.”

Daryl Plummer, vice-president and Gartner Fellow, also gave out a friendly advice to chief information officers of all leading tech giants of the world and said that there’s an urgent need for them to develop a pace that could be sustained “no matter what the future holds.”

According to Plummer, currently, technology-based innovation is arriving faster than most organisations can keep up with. Before one innovation is even properly implemented, two others arrive at the block.

He further adds, “In doing new things, digital giants, such as Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Tencent, are likely to run into situations where their influence has grown so large that it is difficult to create new value scenarios.”

“This ultimately leads to self-disruption. In a self-disrupting strategy, disruption arises as intentional intent to get there first, even if it is necessary to disrupt yourself. While this can be risky, a risk of inaction can be even higher.”

Coming back to AI and job scenario, the Indian government isn’t so much encouraging of the technology. Recently, the Indian government had announced that they aren’t open to driverless cars operating in the country as they believe it will result in loss of jobs, something which goes against their ideology. Instead, the government said they would rather promote the trend of electric cars, something which will save fuel and jobs at the same time.

This development was first reported in The Hindu.

[Image: MIT Sloan Management Review]