93pc Indian workers happy to work with a bot: survey

A whopping 93 percent of Indian workers feel positive about meeting bots and virtual assistants at their workplace, a survey conducted in 10 countries has found.

The survey, by technology giant Cisco, revealed that employees from Mexico (97 percent) and China (96 percent) also desired a virtual assistant at work.

Amid fears that advanced technology may have an impact on the job opportunities, 64 percent of workers in India agree that advanced technology will create more jobs than it will eliminate.

While 81 percent workers in China and 69 percent in Brazil expressed optimism that technology advances will lead to more job creation than reduction, the US and Britain scored lowest with 59 percent and 50 percent respectively.

"I am optimistic about the prospects that AI artificial intelligence (AI) will make our work lives better," Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM, Applications Group, Cisco, said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Working in an AI-enhanced company means we'll have more opportunity to succeed, and more flexibility to do the work we find rewarding."

Further, 95 percent of employees reported that adding a virtual teammate might improve work tasks such as scheduling meetings, taking notes, or typing documents and emails.

More than half of workers feel that a virtual assistant in the team would increase productivity (57 percent) and focus (51 percent).

An interest in the iPhone X and Star Trek fandom was found to be the major influencing factor for technologies based on artificial intelligence.

However, 65 percent of respondents also expressed security as a key concern. Forty-two percent of respondents said they would not use Google Assistant or Alexa at work fearing data privacy and security concerns.

The survey is based on 2,270 white-collar workers in India, the US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and China.