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Digitality and Communication: The Cultural Logic of Data Societies

Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy gave a talk on Dynamism of AI driven work automation skill development oriented towards IT jobs – A context Ethnography  at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad on 7 September.

Since the 1990s, Indian software firms have developed expertise in carrying out outsourced back-office tasks and mid-level IT services like data entry, managing call centers and performing software quality testing for foreign companies taking advantage of a technically trained local workforce. However, the rapidly improving automation technologies are allowing AI-based software to carry out routine IT support work, and repetitive back-office tasks that were previously performed by human actors – the very tasks that global companies originally outsourced to India. This trend of automating manual work practices in the IT industry has generated a different kind of demand for IT skills directed at up-skilling and job readiness.

India is home to the largest under-25 demographic profile in the world requiring a wide-spread, skill-oriented, job-ready tutoring equipping youth to thrive in highly dynamic job markets. As a response to the huge demand for technical education driven by work automation, a large private skill-tutoring ecosystem has sprung up in India and a mammoth hub in Hyderabad. An immersive look at the skill tutoring hub reveals a myriad of IT skills being tutored in several kinds of ’training modules’ to face the constant requirement to up-skill students and professionals who aspire to enter the IT industry.