VBS Student Blog | Insights, Experiences & for Personal Growth

Business & Ethics don’t go hand in hand, A myth or a fact?

Ethics is knowing the basic difference between what is right to do and what we have a right to do. In today’s time of competition, immense pressure it becomes difficult to maintain the balance between Business and Ethics. Ethics are driven by social, cultural and religious values whereas Businesses are more inclined towards logic and practicality of the world, none of them are wrong but they are different from each other. Ethics teaches an individual to be selfless, virtuous but it also true that ethics differs for every individual and these differences leads to clash of opinions, individuality. On the other hand Business being logic and practical driven gives a sense of satisfaction to after completion of any task or achieving goals but it is known to be unethical as they sugar coat their brands and earn money.

Why it is said “Business and ethics do go hand in hand?”

Mostly because businesses have strategies which are termed not right in terms of ethics but they have a right to do so for example Sugar coating the features of the products, unrealistic advertisements to influence consumer’s buying decision. It is not only the marketing aspects but also the costing aspect such as the difference between cost price and selling price usually has a huge difference for profit margins but it affects the income of the supplier who supplies raw materials and the end use which are us. Both are exploited, Suppliers usually get low price for their material and end users have to pay more than they could have while these businesses enjoy vast profits.

Is it true that business and ethics can’t go hand in hand?

 They Can! I believe that business and ethic can work together not totally but to a great extent and it is the need of the hour for businesses to be more ethical than profit oriented to make the world a better place for their consumers, their suppliers and others to sustain their business for longer periods. This has to be done not only for sustaining the business but contributing to business’ brand value, goodwill as well.

“Success is of no use if you don’t have anyone to enjoy with.”

Being Unethical could take you closer to success in initial stages but Ethics would help you to stay successful with your people around you to enjoy that success.

Deepesh .S. Jain

PGDM 2020-2022
Vivekanand Business School

Does the farm feed the farmer?

It’s strange how humans were suspecting a war amongst each other and ended up in a battlefield against nature. While we all kept ourselves safe under an umbrella, our saviours sweat a gallon instead of a pint to ensure we didn’t go to bed hungry. In reality, he is the one who bore the brunt of the unfortunate situation we’ve stumbled upon. When the world came to a standstill and industries all around the globe stopped functioning, our farmers never took a single day off, they kept agriculture sector going and still aren’t given the appreciation they so deserve. 

The Agriculture sector contributed about 4% to world economy and more than 25% in developed nations according to reports projected in 2018. More than 60% of the global population depends upon agriculture for their survival and Agriculture depends upon farmers. The farmers are the ring masters of this sector and without their hard work, there would be no seeds to sow and no crops to harvest. This industry generates employment for around 30% of the population and in some developing countries, more than half of the population is engaged in agriculture. This sector tends to have a varied impact around the globe. 

With minimum expectations towards life, farmers spend their day with mediocrity. Whereas on the other hand, our never-ending desires have levelled up, our needs and wants are not basic anymore. Although food remains a necessity here, whenever we eat, we must think about our farmers, and what they do for our society. We can never pay them back for the hardships they go through for providing us grains that puts off our hunger. The least we can do is, respect and thank them for their generosity, hear them when they are raising their voice for help and stand by them when all they are asking for is our support. 

It is an undeniable fact that farmers are the backbone of our Indian economy. In a way, our farmers represent us. Like India is cultivated with seeds of diverse cultures, they cultivate seeds of varied kinds. Though the Green Revolution made the country self-sufficient, it ignored the very crux of the same. The sad reality of today is that their cry for help is suppressed and has gone unnoticed. Moreover, the suicide rate of farmers and those associated with this sector is increasing day by day due to many reasons with 10,281 suicides in 2019 which accounts to 7.4% of the total deaths by suicide. The issue being sensitive, we might never know the actual number which could possibly be much higher than the published data. If the wheels keep running at this pace, India being an exporter of grains would soon become an importer.

For once, instead of hanging knives of Bills and laws over their heads, let them decide what’s beneficial for them. For once, let the hands that feed us not beg for morsel worth of food. 

Rithika Rao

PGDM

Batch: 2020-2022
Vivekanand Business School

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY

Artificial Intelligence is gaining prominence and can be called the present and future of everything. The world is moving towards being a world of artificial intelligence. It refers to the simulation of human intelligence into machines to make them think and act like humans.

Psychology, on the other hand, studies the mind and behaviour of humans to understand their conscious and unconscious state of mind. Some time ago, psychology's association was with humans helping and understanding humans, but, in recent times, the field of psychology too is exploring the realm of Artificial intelligence. The complexities of psychology and high-powered AI has gained force recently.

Psychotherapy helps patients gain control of their emotions and become calmer and composed in dealing with their emotional conflicts. It calls for one-on-one sessions for treatment. With Artificial intelligence coming into the picture and gaining importance with the presence of information technology in life, the introduction of specialized tools not only helps in altering but also accentuating their cognitive understanding. Emotions, creativity, sentiments, reasoning, cognitive ability, in itself is an array of human psychology. The researchers, therefore, have a great deal to cover in this regard.

What should AI's capability be?

It should be able to identify the problems and provide a sensible and most humane solution. Developing a solution will require an ample amount of research on the mental processes of the human species. Therapeutic work employs techniques to trigger a change. A combination of AI and Psychology will show affective areas, construct genograms, determine the degree of differentiation of self, interaction patterns, and achieve self-awareness. Research in AI has also increasing clinical relevance for therapeutic applications in mental health services. With the innovation of 'virtual psychotherapists' to social robots in dementia and autism care, artificial virtual and robotic agents are taking over therapeutic interventions that used to be offered by skilled professionals only.

The domain of Artificial intelligence has been marked with important developments. They highlight limitations in human rationality and show that computers can be creative. A positive outcome can be witnessed for psychologists studying creativity in psychology. A new class of experiments and algorithms can be developed using new data structures and programs.

From an ethical perspective, the benefits of AI applications in mental health include new ways of treatment, engaging more people, better responses, etc. but some of the concerns include a lack of guidance on the development of AI applications, the potential for misuse of the technologies, the need to respect and protect the patient's autonomy, non-human therapy, and some specific issues are in the long term effects of these applications on the understanding of human condition and psychology.

In conclusion, the use of AI in psychology is a propitious approach and will certainly help in exploring and opening new avenues in the field. However, more research and developments are required to address the existing gaps and bridging them.

Anjali Nair

PGDM A

Vivekanand Business School

Artificial Intelligence and its effects on Job Industry

Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science associated in building smart machines for performing tasks which generally requires human brain or human intelligence to complete.

As the definition says, A.I is used to build smart machines to perform tasks which are generally done with the help of human intelligence, with the introduction of A.I there has been a huge shift in the tech sector.  As we know artificial intelligence is an evolving sector which is penetrating in every industry which could be automated that too with a rapid pace, the future rate of employment is diminishing. Industries and Sectors which are most likely to take hit in place of employment are Manufacturing, Logistics, Transportation, Hospitality etc. Today, there is a shift towards A.I and Automation in major economies of the world and this shift is likely to eliminate low profiled jobs and industries which have repetitive mode of work or tasks are more vulnerable to be eliminated.

As per reports from world economic forum, it is estimated the around 78 million jobs would either be displaced or lost by 2022 due to A.I and automation. Not only this is going to affect the economies but also the cash dependent businesses which mostly opt for reducing overload during recession period or slowdown of economy in form of laying off or cutting jobs for example Infosys released about 9000 employees because of automation of lower jobs in 2017 and some of them were retained for high end jobs, similarly 6000 people lost their job at Cognizant India just to automation.

It is very much true that Artificial intelligence has started shaping our lives and the effects can be seen clearly in the form of unemployment rate turning into double digits which is a matter of concern. But as every technological advancement has its disadvantages and advantages too and so does Artificial Intelligence. The report which stated the loss of jobs also said around 58 million new jobs would be created with the help of automation and A.I but these jobs would not be regular jobs instead will require high skilled labours and also the knowledge of technology. This obviously narrows the eligibility criteria for employment but this increases the quality and efficiency of work.

To survive the lowering rate of employment, the businesses have to train their employees and enhance the skills of adapting with automation and advanced machines, while hiring new employees it should analyse the adaptive capacity of the individual and hire accordingly.  Unemployment could not only be tackled by the enhancement of skills in the industrial sector but skills and technical knowledge should be instilled in the early stages of education as well which could be seen in the new economic policy  launched by our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. This policy could be considered as one of the stepping stones for increasing employment along with artificial intelligence for future generation.

A.I is the new creation which may destroy the traditional jobs and traditional industries but it will make way for newer sections of industries and jobs as well

 As it is said,

“For every Creation, there has to be destruction of the old.”

Thank you

 


For further queries get in touch with us.

Deepesh Jain

PGDM Div A.

Artificial Intelligence in India

Artificial Intelligence is a dedicated field for artificial systems programmed to match human performance and responses. The ultimate aim of creating these machine-beings is to replicate human reasoning and act according to the inputs with structured algorithms, using real time data, similar patterns of data captured and dispersed data from available sources and process it together to give an output. 

Following the trend and being one step ahead in terms of experimenting, is a smart way to move ahead. But when it came to AI, knowledge and capacity utilisation of available tools and treasure also played an important role here. Before entering the competition, India had to measure competencies and evaluate strengths. The analysis raised a number of questions like would AI help create opportunities? Will it help us prosper? The answer was, Research! That is exactly what India did before it introduced AI in the country. India deeply analysed all the aspects of AI before determining its scope here and how it would give us recognition and a prominent place in the global market. India had already experienced how sowing the seeds of IT and ITeS sector since the early 90’s had fairly contributed to the GDP growth rate and benefited our economy. Although, introducing a technology sector this big in a developing country was not only a high-risk decision to be made, it was more of a ride or die scenario. 

Today, Artificial intelligence in India is way beyond the starting line of the race. With Government wanting to implement strategies like digitisation all over India, it is expecting a growth in AI related start-ups and firms to use AI technology for their products and services. But the cost of failure is quite high which becomes a key reason as to why investors are hesitating to splurge funds in spite of extensive scope and demand in this very field. As a result of this, India has only been customising and adding features to borrowed innovations which already exist and have been put to use in other countries like The United States and China who are leading with their innovations in AI. If not anything, the Government needs to step up and invest in the upcoming ideas to build AI machines and applications, keeping in mind that in coming years, AI would contribute a huge chunk to the GDP growth rate of our economy.

The Government is keen on making AI a success in India and hence, has started to take baby steps towards broadening of various aspects that give a grip to AI systems and programs. The education sector is including AI related subjects and illustrating its scope in the near future, individuals are trying to upgrade their skills to prepare themselves for the era of AI, industries have also started to work with AI systems and creating new programs, the Government is planning to incorporate infrastructure that would support AI, and AI research centres for AI software like chatbots are being opened. With these changes and AI start-ups emerging in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India has definitely kick started its journey to reach excellence in the field of AI to be at par with other global partakers. But still, there is more road to cover. 

There needs to be a clear understanding with respect to the policies pertaining to AI and its evolution. It is important to design a constructive path to formulate the same, rather than having a scattered approach. A detailed regulatory approach would help in the shape shifting of the economic conditions of our country. AI would prove to be very useful in Healthcare, education and agriculture sectors, advanced engineering, technology, High-tech electronic, semi-conductor firms, in e-commerce, and many more areas. In fact, AI industry alone is expected to generate around 2 lakh jobs by 2021.

India is a tech driven country and depends upon IT for most of its activities. Soon, the implementation of Artificial Intelligence would also catch on. The future is AI. And if you aren’t adopting AI or educating yourself with the ongoing innovations and trends of this field, it is sure to take you by surprise and you’d be forsaken sooner than you think and it would be hard to fathom. 

From facial recognition software to diagnosing illness and drones to self-driving cars, everything is AI. Imagine the power of Artificial Intelligence to even have grasped the slightest probability of bringing this into reality. With the immense power that AI possess, there are also certain risks and threats related to misusing of this technology especially in the areas of security. AI regulatory agenda and application of laws should be implemented with precise details. It would be a question of debate to understand if the applied laws for human beings and machine-beings for performing similar acts would be undifferentiated or not.

When talking about AI, only considering its significant contribution to the GDP and economy or to the society at large is like undermining the power of AI, as it would change the entire scenario of today’s world and has the potential to make us question our own existence.

Thanks & Regards

Rithika Rao

Vivekanand Business School