 (8).png)
1 hour ago
2
ARTICLE AD BOX
Summary
Instead of asking whether artificial intelligence (AI) will destroy jobs, the country should ask which tasks it will automate, augment or leave to humans. This will help guide India’s youth to pursue careers based on valuable human skills.
There are two prominent views in the AI-and-jobs debate. The first warns that we are standing at the edge of a white-collar employment cliff. Artificial intelligence (AI) will replace work across coding, customer support, analytics, legal and medical domains.
This fear is not irrational. Frontier systems have shown striking progress on coding benchmarks and score strongly on reasoning, legal and medical tests, even if their real-world reliability lags.
The counterview argues that we over-attribute layoffs to AI. Many companies over-hired during the pandemic and are now correcting course. AI has become a convenient scapegoat for decisions driven by margin pressure, weak demand and bloated structures. Clear evidence of economy-wide AI-induced unemployment remains absent.
Both views get something right but miss something important. Jobs are bundles of tasks. A customer support role includes answering routine queries, handling escalations, improving knowledge bases and spotting product gaps. AI may automate the first layer but the rest becomes more valuable. In software engineering, AI collapses simple coding but increases the importance of judgement and systems thinking.
Instead of asking whether AI will destroy jobs, we should ask which tasks it will automate, augment or leave deeply human. This is where the “human sandwich” idea from Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, becomes useful.
In complex work, the human sits on both sides of AI. A human frames the problem, provides context and defines success. AI handles much of the execution. A human then reviews, judges, corrects and extends the output. AI sits in the middle but human capability ultimately determines value.
Every’s own experience is telling. Even after aggressive automation, humans were not eliminated—their work evolved. People now spend more time framing, reviewing, managing and improving AI-assisted workflows. Recent analysis of millions of job vacancies shows that AI-focused roles increasingly demand resilience, agility and analytical thinking.
The task lens reveals a clear pattern. Simple, repetitive, low-context work faces the greatest pressure: data entry, basic ticketing, routine testing, low-end content, simple documentation and back-office processes.
This matters deeply to India. Millions of young people enter the workforce through these lower-rung jobs. As AI reshapes the first step of the employment ladder, India’s real opportunity lies in transforming the entry-level pathway itself—turning the first rung from routine task work into a launchpad for AI-fluent value creation. This is an opening waiting to be tapped and will require coordinated work across government, industry and education.
The story grows more encouraging higher up the value chain. The more complex the job, the more it becomes human-plus-AI rather than AI-only. Domain knowledge, trust, accountability, empathy, negotiation, field understanding, institutional memory and judgement remain irreplaceable. As AI makes average output cheap, differentiated human capability becomes even more valuable.
What should India do to help young people cross this bridge confidently?
First, recognize that AI adoption is not just a private productivity decision. A recent Hangzhou case in China, where a court ruled against arbitrary dismissal based on AI capability and awarded compensation, offers a lesson. India should not ban automation but AI-led restructuring must include re-training, re-assignment, severance packages and accountability.
Second, go into the details. The High-Powered Education to Employment and Enterprise Standing Committee proposed in the Union budget for 2026-27 should direct the creation of a practical, task-by-task map for key sectors. Every task should be classified into ‘automate’, ‘augment’ or ‘human-edge’ buckets. Training programmes must then be built around real workflows, not generic certificates.
Third, protect and upgrade the entry-level ladder. Freshers should learn to supervise AI agents, validate outputs, handle exceptions, work with domain data and understand customer context. Apprenticeship programmes must be re-imagined for the AI era, training young people for human-plus-AI work from day one.
Fourth, India’s IT and business process management (BPM) sector must move beyond labour arbitrage. The model of using low-cost human resources for repeatable work is exactly what AI disrupts. They must offer higher-value, judgement-rich services.
Finally, we must unlock skills. AI productivity depends on the abilities of humans using it. A weak worker with AI produces faster mediocrity. A strong worker with AI creates extraordinary leverage.
The future of work will be shaped by the wisdom of our institutions and the ambition of our people. India has crossed such thresholds before—turning a young population into a global software powerhouse and a connectivity gap into world-leading digital public infrastructure. The AI moment is another such threshold.
If we treat people as possessors of capabilities to amplify rather than costs to cut, and if the government, industry leaders and educators move with shared purpose, India can convert this transition into an opportunity for a new generation of Indians to pursue careers that are more human skill-demanding and valuable than ever.
The authors are, respectively, member, and distinguished fellow, Niti Aayog.
English (US) ·