AT least one player in the information technology (IT) services sector is calling for the Government and business leaders to start having open conversations about the likely impact artificial intelligence (AI) can have on businesses in the country and, more specifically, the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

Mervyn Eyre, head of Fujitsu Caribbean, said the BPO sector in the island is already feeling the impact of AI.

“It’s transformational, and if I were the Government of Jamaica I would pay attention to it because the BPO industry is about job creation but now the customers that the BPO industry are serving are themselves adopting AI — chatbots and all these things — which minimises the need for offshore outsourcing. And the BPO industry itself is using it [AI], so a lot of the tasks that used to be somebody taking a call are now being managed by AI because of a lot of it is repetitive,” Eyre told the Jamaica Observer in an interview.

“I was speaking with one of the BPOs recently and they are cutting staff because AI is doing a lot of what the staff used to do, so there is a shift there. This is happening as we speak,” he continued.

So, our role as Fujitsu in this region is to help our customers navigate the whole issue of AI so that there is a purposeful application of AI in a trusted way, because you don’t just fling it in, you use it purposefully to achieve the outcomes that you are seeking — which can either help you to transform your organisation or create a completely different customer experience, or do things more efficiently.”

He said with AI evolving, the conversations around how it can be used here in Jamaica to enhance workflow must be an issue that no one shies away from, even though it may impact jobs.

“I was in the company of BPO industry leaders recently, talking and listening to them, and I was stunned. Even though we are into technology, I was stunned by the impact the BPO industry leaders say AI is having on them. I was listening to this one particular BPO leader, and I won’t give names, but this one particular BPO leader said he had 7,000 seats back in November but by February it declined to 5,000 — and that’s for two reasons. They were applying AI in that they were purposefully saying, ‘Let’s look at what our agents are doing and let’s apply AI to it and then see which is more efficient.’ They did it and, on balance, AI was as efficient as a person in doing some of the repititive tasks,” he added.

Eyre said given that reality, one would have to start wondering why a BPO would need an agent to do the tasks that AI can do at a much cheaper rate.

“I am just using that as an example,” he continued, “because we in Jamaica have made certain assumptions around job creation initiatives, and because BPOs are about outsourcing of repeatable tasks [then] you need to rethink — because AI is doing excellent work and can do repeatable tasks very well. So I am just saying, leadership in business and Government needs to really get to understand how AI can disrupt employment.”

Eyre’s boss, Asif Poonja, CEO of Fujitsu Americas and who was in the interview, chipped in.

“This is where future of work initiatives are so important, so what is the Government doing about the vision of the future of work? So if it’s not BPO, what does the world look like 10 years or 15 years from now? And then [they would need to] come back and say: ‘Are institutions gearing students towards the future?’ Maybe BPO was the last five to 10 years’ growth [but] what’s the next growth wave?” he asked.

Poonja suggested that some of the people who could be displaced by AI in the BPO sector could turn to other areas like IT services, which will see strong growth in the years to come as more businesses adopt AI.

“In IT services, and what we are trying to do in consulting digitalisation, we can’t find enough people so there are opportunities there. But we need to start asking the question: ‘What is the future of work for Jamaica?’ “ Poonja noted.

Eyre, in support, said the conversation must be one that is embraced by all.

“I don’t know if the Government is having the conversation but if not, this is the type of conversation that we should start having now in the country among business leaders and the Government because what’s happening is, this is creeping in….it is already creeping in. And our role in this region is to help create the awareness of this, to present skills to our customers in helping to understand it and to seek the opportunities to leverage it — but also to understand the risks of them not using it. That’s our role, and we’ve been doing it over the decades in terms of our responsibility in getting value from technology. And I think I will also share that as we shift more to being a service business, based on using technology for good, we have to make sure that we are doing this responsibly and purposefully because there’s lots of potential for AI and there is also risks.”

But he said though the spotlight is now on how AI could disrupt employment in the BPO sector, “because its whole intention is to do repetitive tasks”, he said it can also be used to help grow the sector as well.

“We need to start having conversations around the assumptions that we are building our national strategy and business plans on — we need to rethink those.”

“We need to understand AI because it is multifaceted, multidimension[al] and very disruptive. So industries like BPO — which were designed to be able to outsource repeatable tasks, repeatable processes to cost bases that are much cheaper — if you negate that, because AI can do much of that for you, you can see that industry logically being impacted. But, at the same time you can see how those industries themselves can use AI to transform themselves because I don’t think the BPO industry will disappear, but there’s a risk. What it can do is change what it does. It means that the human agents that you now have need to have a different kind of intelligence to what they currently have at the moment, so you need to start upskilling them.”

AI, Eyre told Sunday Finance, will wipe out the lower-level mundane and repititive tasks

“The other thing that AI is doing, it is giving insights that we never had before, so even with the BPO industry the level of analysis that AI is producing with these tools, can tell you, down to an individual level, their performance — which can be used to drive improvements.”