What top CEOs think about AI, upskilling for future jobs: Read on to find out

CEOs are increasingly being confronted with situations that need them to sharpen their decision-making skills. So, what do CEOs expect from areas such as corporate growth, artificial intelligence, and data and analytics? The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey of 1,378 chief executives seeks to answer these questions. What came out strongly in this report were the two key things that all CEOs agreed on. First, that technology must be harnessed to meet the needs of the people and their communities. Second, people must be educated for the future so that their skills give them a better chance of success.

That said, prevailing sentiments are not positive and CEOs feel that the global economy is not going to pick up steam anytime soon, and also whether they can improve short or medium-term revenues is also doubtful, This is not only because of concerns over terrorism and climate change but also of geo-political and trade disputes.

They are looking to counter this by staying local rather than expanding their businesses. So much so, that this survey noted “a record jump in pessimism, with nearly 30 percent of CEOs projecting a decline in global economic growth, up from a mere 5 percent last year.” There is a huge 436 percent increase in the share of CEOs who expect global economic growth to decline. In the Asia-Pacific region, CEOs are expecting improved economic growth levels to fall from 60 percent to 50 percent.

Concerns over data collection/usage, cybersecurity and privacy continue to haunt them but they are keen to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) more. But the reality is that despite billions of dollars spent on AI already, “the gap between the information CEOs need and what they get has not closed in the past ten years”, the report stated. This is because of data being stored in silos and a lack of analytical skills to understand what the data is showing.

The issues they consider a threat to their businesses are more related to the ease of doing business than existential. So in 2018, the top five were, in order of priority: Over-regulation, terrorism, geo-political uncertainty, cyber threats and availability of key skills. In 2019, these were: Over-regulation, policy uncertainty, policy uncertainty, availability of key skills, trade conflicts and cyber threats, with terrorism moving way down to the bottom of this list. Out of these reasons, the one that bothered CEOs across all regions the most was policy uncertainty. In fact, 88 percent of them are worried about the US-China trade conflict.

Keeping this trade tension in mind, CEOs are mostly changing their sourcing strategies and tweaking their supply chains. They are also seeking alternative territories for their growth strategy, delaying capital expenditure and shifting production to new venues. Almost 60 percent of North American CEOs are worried about protectionism. Keeping this in mind, CEOs are looking to expand locally. Globally, India ranked behind China and Germany, as markets they might like to explore. Keeping the current social and political turmoil in mind in India, the fact is that we might find ourselves further down the list, in reality.

The methods of revenue generation, they are looking forward to use are, in order of priority: Operational efficiency (77 percent), organic growth (71 percent), launch a new service or product (62 percent), new joint venture (40 percent), enter a new market or new M&A (37 percent), collaborate with startups (32 percent) or sell a business (14 percent).

But what is of huge interest for the future of their companies’ growth is improvements in AI and the parallel leap in people’s skills to cope with this. If the latter occurs, the chances of jobs lost are much less. Besides, not just the technology being available, but the ability to make all this AI explainable is the real key. At least 84 percent of the CEOs agree that AI is good for society if all of the above-mentioned variables are met.

In a recent analysis of OECD data covering 200,000 jobs in 29 countries, PwC has divided AI’s job displacement effect into three sections: Algorithmic (until the early 2020s), augmentation (to late 2020s), and autonomy (to mid-2030s). “The first wave will impact relatively few jobs — perhaps 3 percent. By the mid-2030s, however, up to 30 percent of jobs could be automated — mostly those involving clerical and manual tasks”, stated the report.

When explaining AI’s potential, Natarjan Chandrasekaran. Chairman of Tata Sons said, “Let me put a chip or a sensor anywhere in a system, and I can collect even more data, in huge volumes, on a real-time basis. As that comes in, my ability to do analytics expands. We are now moving into the world of anticipative computing. We’re not only gathering data in real time, but also anticipating the data to come. You can tell what’s likely to happen in the next 30 seconds. And if you can predict it in that time, that’s all the time you need to prevent it or make use of it.”

That said, while AI is on top of every CEO’s agenda, not many as yet, have introduced any initiatives, and this is true of all countries across the globe. The reason for this, apart from the skills requirement, is the quality of the data that CEOs receive. CEOs did state in the report that “the ‘lack of analytical talent’ (54 percent), followed by ‘data siloing’ (51 percent), and ‘poor data reliability’ (50 percent) as the primary reasons the data they receive is inadequate.” Forty-one percent of the CEOs judged financial forecasting data as being better and more comprehensive but the quality of data on what customers wanted is still sorely lagging behind. And that is really where the goldmine is.