Bol Madhavache

“If everything is being done by AI, what will human beings do?”
A question raised by one of the top CEOs in the Indian IT industry in the conference — a question that no longer carries a shocking impact, yet one for which no one has a readymade answer. If my products are developed by AI, what do I do if AI also oversees my kitchen, he mentioned sarcastically.

A mathematician, Bartosz Naskrecki of the University in Poznan, confirmed that AI systems are defying the hypothesis that AI systems are widely seen as powerful computational tools, capable of executing calculations but not of understanding abstract concepts or demonstrating creativity. He demonstrated how AI solved a complex 20‑year problem. While this capability can open many more frontiers to understand the universe and the cosmos, the headline that grabbed attention was: “Are human beings needed?”

Both these extreme examples are just reconfirmation of what everyone now knows: AI is not just technology, not just a change in basic assumptions, not just productivity. Yet several businessmen, ever willing to measure everything in terms of balance‑sheet entries, start calculating productivity through headcount replacement.

Productivity, a terminology that acquired its importance after the Industrial Revolution in terms of mechanical efficiency, evolved further with the formation of management as a science, when human beings began correlating it with process efficiency, system integrations, and the liberation of human energy to do higher‑level tasks.

Never did it mean outsourcing cognitive thinking, creativity, emotions, or the replacement of knowledge‑processing abilities. The AI impact on an already strained Earth and climate resources is another area of risk. In the event of any disaster, AI systems will have the capability to build resilience for themselves more than helping human beings.

This is the paradox. When we do not know what we want to achieve, we simply think like businessmen: Can I replace my entire manpower to achieve the same profits? This may be possible, but the cost associated with social, emotional, environmental, family space, life goals, and the quality of life becomes dissociated.

If everything is achieved by AI and human beings have nothing to do, it becomes a classic mathematical case of infinite labour productivity. Of course, other material, process, and operational costs matter, but human life is reduced to zero.

This, according to me, is the Paradox of Productivity.