Adi Godrej talks in favour of automation

Veteran industrialist Adi Godrej, the chairman of Godrej Group, has said that people don’t need to resist automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, fearing that it would lead to job losses for humans.

"It (things like automation, artificial intelligence and robotics) only improves productivity", he said.

"Throughout history, every time there are new inventions, new productivity improvements, people worry about jobs not being created. It increases productivity. When you increase productivity, economy grows and when your economy grows, there will be more jobs created and there will be better progress. So, we shouldn't worry about it at all", Godrej said.

"We should encourage all forms of productivity increase. Otherwise, same protests when machinery first started, same protests came when computers were first used in banks etc, etc...we should encourage productivity improvement, that's the way the world improves," he said.

Godrej, who has been the President of Confederation of Indian Industry in the past, dismissed suggestions from some quarters that 25 years of economic liberalisation led to inequality in wealth going up, and that the benefits were not being made available to farmers.

He argued that instead, the last 25 years have seen India bringing "many, many more" people out of poverty than it did in the earlier years since 1947.

"So, unless you have good economic policy, you cannot remove poverty. And it's a natural corollary that there will be some people who have been very successful earning more than people who are not successful. That's a natural corollary of free enterprise. So, we shouldn't be too concerned about that," he added.

"Otherwise in the day of socialism before we opened up, it led to poverty for all which is terrible. So, I think it (economic liberalisation) has been very good for India. Of course we could have done even better, with more liberalisation. We should continue in that path," Godrej said.

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