Financial Technology and use of Artificial Intelligence

Your workplace is your second home, and your colleagues are next to kin. That's because we spend a very large part of our lives in the office. We all face our deepest emotions during work hours—the joy of accomplishing targets and getting that needed paid vacation, the intimacy of grumbling about your boss to your favorite friend in the office when they complain about your work, the happiness of celebrating your birthday with your colleagues, and taking that quick break with your office mates after work to relax and ease out.

The office is like a mirage of so many lives mixing together in a palette of perfectly blended colors that grace the tapestry of one-of-a-kind mosaic—an illustration of small pieces of lives brought together to complete the story of a united vision of achieving business goals. But, you know what's the point?

We are soon going to be replaced by minions of technology sans any emotional shield. Sadly, there won't be any heart-touching stories to recall in silent moments of precious nostalgia, of helping someone or making a difference in someone's life. The sheer fabric of humanity will fade. Mechanical exercises and frivolous assumptions of work processes will take over the human instinct of justifying real success.

Will there, then, prevail the shield of human considerations in business transactions? Those that compel the seamless progress of instinctive human ingenuity?

Remember the times you ran short of enough cash at your dear convenience store on those odd days to pay for your groceries? There was always a lifesaver—a cashier who considered your predicament of running out of little change or cash. If you were short of ₹5 or ₹10 here and there, they would still let you take your stuff from the shop on the promise that you would pay them the next day.

Fast forward to 2019: customers are downloading apps to pay for groceries at Amazon Go, where Artificial Intelligence has replaced the everyday Santa of a cashier in the US. In this case, if you're short of cash, you just have to drop the groceries back in the store, no matter if you go hungry on that rainy day. There's no Pyaarelal anymore to your rescue.

According to statistics, 61% of businesses globally have adopted AI to replace manual jobs.

They say necessity is the mother of all inventions. You think, was there a need to replace the cashier at all? Yes, sure, it made for great innovation for the brand, helping it rank first in the industry among its competition. But it has throttled the sheer constitution of humanity! Even if Amazon thought that AI is a long-term investment, it didn't take into account that a lifetime of the cashier's salary would be cheaper than investing in a heartless AI. Forget the lives he touched that made the brand synonymous with loyalty among customers like you.

Here are some compelling excerpts from a thought-provoking interview with VP of HR Divya Sutar at Capri Global that dispels myths surrounding technological advancements:
"We use technology to ease our employees' struggle with certain business complexities. But we definitely don't allow it to replace us." – Divya Sutar

"We have to understand that technology should be our slave and not the other way around. Otherwise, at the speed at which AI is replacing human jobs, there will come a point in technological advancement where it will replace the race of humans completely. This, I think, is the biggest challenge for HR in a global scenario today—AI slowly but steadily replacing human jobs," says Divya.

"It's now replacing mundane taskmasters in the name of seamless business workflow, but tomorrow it may replace you. Think about it. Think of the movie Predators, where the giant robot wipes out the entire human race! And yes, even the most powerful will cease to exist in its clutches."

Is it not our responsibility to protect our cubs, our planet of humans as one of the extra-terrestrials in the universe? Is it not time to defend our kingdom? Do we want to be taken over by robots so advanced that they will be programmed to create more robots and destroy the beauty of mortality altogether?

If technology makes life easy, use it, but don't be ignorant enough to abuse it. That's why there is a pressing need to educate even the most educated about the side effects of AI adventures to protect our species in the face of a technology-first insurgency, says Divya Sutar.

"Use technology that will help bring out the best predictive analysis for humans to continue to take the final call using their God-given instincts to rule the roost," adds Divya.

Like we established—there's always somebody above you. Let that be the experienced CEO at work or the father of the family. Let there be emotions. Let there be human considerations. Let us be ruled by love for our fellow companions on this planet Earth. Let us continue to flourish in being the smartest of living beings in this cosmos. Let the world continue to celebrate instinctive communication that no AI can ever be programmed with," Divya ends on a possessive note.