The global consultancy intends to hire enough tech specialists to be able to fully staff a medium-sized global bank. finews.asia takes a look.
It seems like the advent of artificial intelligence is not going to be the end of office work as we know it. Or at least not quite yet – if we can go by a media release issued by global consultancy Capgemini on Monday.
It seems the self-dubbed leader in tech advice intends to double staffing levels in their global data and AI teams to 60,000 over the next three years and back it with over $2 billion in investment. That would essentially make those teams the same size as a mid-sized global bank - and not all that much less than UBS’s 72,000 or so employees (pre-Credit Suisse).
But one of the key questions is where they will be getting all these future experts from given the industry is still a relatively nascent one and they already apparently have 30,000 people on their rosters working in those two disciplines.
Generative AI
But they seem to have a ready answer for that. They intend to park the incoming wave of humanity in four areas encompassing what the industry has come to term generative AI – strategy, customer experience, software engineering, and enterprise services.
Strategy seems to be the most straightforward of the four areas, and here employees will be developing use cases for businesses that sign up for the consultancy’s services.
Once that is done, they will then set the foundations for clients related to people, processes, and technology in a way that helps them to scale their generative AI activities while mitigating risks.
Tailoring Assistants
The customer experience area is also relatively easy to understand. Here Capgemini has four dedicated generative AI assistants, and its employees will be tailoring them to the specific needs of clients with personalized chatbots when it comes to customer care as well as product assistants that help boost the performance of sales teams.
When it comes to software engineering, it sounds like a great deal of the work will involve helping companies implement modernization programs related to legacy software while also enhancing security.
The fourth area, enterprise, essentially involves fine-tuning custom generative AI assistants for companies with sensitive data.
A Different Perspective
The question remains as to whether 60,000 employees are needed for that. A quick question sent to a PR spokesperson indicated that the consultancy seemed comfortable with the number. They also added that Capgemini’s total headcount at the end of 2022 was 359,600, something that does indeed put things in a different perspective overall.
Still, if anyone has a bad feeling about where their finance job is headed, they at least know where they can try to apply for a job, particularly if they were working with older, less intelligent banking chatbots in the operations and risk management areas.
That is at least something in this brave new world of generative AI amid the current furor around natural language processing chatbots such as ChatGTP, or the new Bing, currently generating worldwide attention and driving financial markets, particularly in the US.
