ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) is not fully realized yet to be seen as a threat to jobs, the founder of a Manila-based outsourcing company said recently.
Itamar Gero, founder and chief executive officer of TrueLogic Online Solutions, told reporters in a chance interview that AI technology was “still not what they think it is.”
“It is not something very intelligent. It is more on conditional automation, meaning a lot of tasks will be automated with a lot of conditions, so it seems like it’s making a decision, but if a person did not program it, the decision will not be made yet,” said Gero, who also serves as president of the Israel Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.
“Automation in a way is a good thing if you harness it correctly. You need to be prepared to be the operator of the AI or the automation,” he said.
Gero noted his company saw growth with automation without the need to cut jobs.
“We retain the same number of people but we are able to service more clients. We never reduced the number of our employees. We just grew through automation and innovation,” he said.
Gero said the company currently had 150 employees. “We’re growing actually. We’re working on it [since]we are in a digital agency and [seek]for clients worldwide. We’re not looking at sheer numbers but we’re looking at the quality of the work.”
Gero founded TrueLogic Online Solutions in the Philippines in 2009 to beef up businesses’ brand presence by providing resources to accommodate offshore IT (information technology) and SEO (search engine optimization) outsourcing needs.
“I think the Filipinos are more resilient and connected to the countries we are outsourcing to, so it’s an easy connection. In other countries we have seen struggles in language and culture, but here there is no struggle. Talents are here, they’re putting knowledge here as well as outsourcing, and the next step is Filipinos understanding it and doing it themselves,” he said.