TCS aims to train entire staff with Gen AI skills

Country's largest IT services exporter TCS will train its entire staff of over 5 lakh software engineers on the upcoming Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) opportunity, as per a senior official.

As a business opportunity, Gen AI is in its "early days" right now and the use cases are smaller right now, head of the company's recently created 'AI.Cloud' unit Siva Ganesan told PTI.

The company, which had disclosed a few months ago about being engaged in 250 generative AI-powered projects, is also using the intelligence gleaned from Gen AI to make its ongoing work for clients faster, he added.

"So it's probably smaller use cases right now. It is a matter of time before the huge transformation that we also talk about that supplements assets and augments come by. Is there a timeline to that, I think for right now it is wait and watch, we have to see in the coming quarters right of the game unfolds," he said.

As it gears up for the future, which will witness higher demand for AI offerings, TCS is in investment mode, primarily getting the staff ready with the skills and also partnering with the right entities, officials said.

"The workforce is getting geared and getting primed and it's a matter of time when all the organization itself is (Gen) AI-ready," he said.

When asked for a targeted time period by when it plans to finish the staff training on Gen AI skillsets, Ganesan declined to specify but added that one can easily do the math given the current rate of training, under which it has trained over 1.50 lakh staffers in the skillsets in about seven months.

"We are very confident to create one of the world's largest AI-ready workforce for the future so that I think we can safely say that with a high degree of confidence," its chief technology officer Harrick Vin said.

Ganesan said that a part of the skills which the company is imparting also focuses on non-tech areas which keep in mind the broader goals of the organisation.

When asked about profitability and if the easy availability of tools like ChatGPT at consumer ends will lead to a compromise, Ganesan did not answer the question directly.

Gen AI solutions require a lot of rigour and are complex ones to execute, he added.

"In terms of the way we go about it, there are several things to consider. One is the right guardrails, security, confidentiality, you know, there is a lot of hard work that goes into the architecture and construction of these systems and what value will come out of deploying them or implementing them," Ganesan said.