< strong>MOSCOW, July 8If the largest Russian factories transform production in the next 3-5 years by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, this will be able to increase labor productivity, according to experts from the session “Productivity for the high-tech industry of the future: increasing competitiveness and responsible production” at the Innoprom exhibition -2024″, which started on Monday in Yekaterinburg.
The discussion was moderated by Kirill Kayem, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Skolkovo Foundation for Innovation. He noted that in the context of the development of digital and AI technologies as a whole, the country and business have to change approaches to education and adaptation of personnel, as well as transform production processes. 
“We are at a moment when the speed of change in technology stacks is so fast that educational processes do not have time to adapt those people who had the old education package. The question is how much we can adjust the information and educational environment to the speed of technology change,” Kayem said , whose words were quoted by the fund’s press service.
He noted that many are talking about the risks of widespread adoption of AI, which will “leave us all out of work,” while at the same time it is important that output per person has a positive growth trend. At the same time, most enterprises still use tools that they have been accustomed to since the 80s of the last century (labor standardization, standard operating procedures (SOPs), etc.). 
In turn, Oksana Sidleckaya, director of the Ural representative office of hh.ru, noted that retraining and training of personnel today are becoming the most important issue for companies. There are a lot of workers in the 40+ segment that are in demand, and businesses are adapting them. Those who learn to correctly select forty-year-olds and adapt them to their processes will gain an advantage in the labor market, the speaker believes.
«At the same time, quite a lot of young people are entering the market who “are doing well with digitalization,” but there is a large pool of employers who are still not ready to hire young people. However, the pool of those who have already changed this» “habit”, “is growing,” Sidletskaya’s words are quoted in the message.
Margarita Patrusheva, practice director at Reksoft Consulting, added that today the focus in personnel policy is shifting. If initially calculations on labor productivity and staff numbers were made in order to achieve optimization, now we are talking about preparing the enterprise for technological transformation, reducing the load on staff in order to avoid burnout and turnover. 
S Plus Consulting partner Alexey Nesterenko cited several figures. The average growth in labor productivity in Russia is 1.6%, although in 2016-2017 it reached 3%. But in countries such as the United States, it is even less — 1.4%, and in Germany — minus 0.2%.
«In general, no one is growing very quickly today. We looked at the historical perspective and saw that we are in a situation that was observed 100 years ago, when a large number of innovations were introduced — electrification, mass training of the working class,» the speaker's press service quotes.
The Innoprom industrial exhibition has been held in Yekaterinburg since 2010 and is one of the largest international trading platforms and one of the main instruments for exporting Russian industrial products. This year, the UAE is a partner country of the exhibition.
The event is held from July 8 to 11.