Asia In Brief Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani has said the advent of AI means organizations no longer have any excuse to retain their legacy systems.
Speaking at Infosys AI Day last week, Nilekani said AI is changing the very nature of work, and used software development as his example.
“Talent will have to deal with a world where writing code will not be the goal. It will be actually making AI work – orchestration and those kinds of things,” he said.
But the chair said making AI work means getting rid of legacy systems.
“Many large companies are spending 60 to 80 percent of their IT spend on maintaining systems,” Nilekani said. “If you really want a firm to take advantage of AI, you have to fundamentally clean this up.”
“But the good news is, for the first time, because of AI, we have the tools now to do modernization … very quickly and in a much more economic way. So we have a huge demand, and we have the ability now to do it,” he said.
But he warned AI will also make more legacy systems.
“The very fact that you can generate stuff means you can generate slop. In fact, five years from now, there’ll be more AI legacy systems than any other legacy system – all the kind of stuff that will have been generated – and we’ll have to clean that up as well.”
He also called for organizations adopting AI to ensure it makes their people productive by implementing usage guidelines, quality gates, and explainability rules.
“You can have this fake productivity,” he said. “Let’s say there are two guys and they are having a fight. One guy will draft an email that is one paragraph. He will give it to AI to make it into a ten-paragraph email because he wants to impress the other guy. The other guy will take the 10-paragraph email and summarize it back to one paragraph.”
“So both have used AI, but what have we achieved? Nothing.”
AI wrecks work/life balance at Australian employment tribunal
Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC), the nation’s industrial relations regulator, is struggling to handle a surge of matters lodged using generative AI tools.
In a speech [PDF] delivered last week, FWC president Justice Adam Hatcher observed that the organization’s workload typically varied in sync with labor market cycles.
“In the previous decade, there was a clear correlation between the number of dismissal-related applications and the state of the labor market,” he said. “Broadly speaking, if retrenchments were going up, dismissal related applications would go up, and they would go down if retrenchments were going down.”
That changed after the November 2022 debut of ChatGPT, when the FWC’s usual ~30,000 cases a year jumped by 10,000 in the following year. Justice Hatcher said the FWC is now on track to receive over 50,000 filings this year. Most of the growth in caseload comes from matters in which employees allege they were unfairly dismissed.
The president said his hypothesis for the rise is that ChatGPT and other generative AI tools advise that applicants will likely succeed if they file a case and make it easy to draft the documents needed to commence an action.
He said the resulting surge in applications “has disrupted the work of the FWC in a number of ways.”
“Obviously, the workload on members and staff has increased significantly, and this is putting stress on everyone,” he said. “So if you’re offered an appointment to the FWC, don’t accept it on the basis that you think you will have a better work-life balance. You won’t.”
Justice Hatcher also said the flood of AI-inspired cases is the FWC’s performance cand causing it to miss KPIs.
The organization plans to soon introduce an “AI disclosure requirement” that requires applicants to admit to using AI, and to confirm they have verified the accuracy of AI-generated content in their court filings. It’s hoped those disclosures will result in better quality filings, and speedier processing for FWC staff.
Vietnam opens over-water drone delivery route
The government of Vietnam last week announced it has started using drones to deliver parcels between two towns.
Can Gio and Vung Tau are 119km apart by roads that pass through the very congested Ho Chi Minh City, but just 25km apart as the crow flies – if it passes over the Vinh Ganh Rai Bight.
Ho Chi Minh City’s Department of Science and Technology hailed the first flight on the route as “a pioneering step in smart mobility solutions aimed at boosting the digital economy and easing pressure on road transport infrastructure.”
Vietnam’s government has also approved operations of SpaceX’s Starlink space broadband service within its borders.
India signs Pax Silica
India’s government last week signed up for the Pax Silica, a US-led effort to ensure AI and supply chain security, and a Joint Statement on the “India-U.S. AI Opportunity Partnership” as a bilateral addendum to the Declaration.
The partnership will see the two nations “promote pro-innovation regulatory approaches, strengthen the physical AI stack, and advance free enterprise.”
The pact also “envisions empowering AI developers, startups, and ecosystem enablers; exploring joint research and development; facilitating industry partnerships and investments in next-generation data centers; enhancing cooperation on access to compute and advanced processors; and accelerating innovation in AI models and applications.”
China shows off dancing robots
A belated Kung Hei Fat Choi to Chinese readers after last Tuesday’s New Year’s Day, an occasion state television marks with an annual gala that celebrates Chinese culture.
This year’s show featured dancing humanoid robots.
“One of the highlights came when humanoid robots brought Kung Fu to the next level, performing vaults and backflips with smooth and precise movements,” according to state media, which asserted “The performance has amazed overseas netizens who expressed their admiration for the development of China’s robotics industry.”
Watch for yourself below, and use the comments to let us know if you are indeed amazed.
For what it’s worth, your correspondent became a little terrified when, at about the 4:00 mark in the video, a giant boss robot appeared and showed off its skills with a sword. ®