DC Edit | Indian IT Must Adapt To AI

The $285-billion rout that a mere announcement of an AI automation tool has set off in global stocks indicates high levels of uncertainty among investors about the future path of the global technology sector, affecting all its stakeholders such as companies, employees and their families.

The new AI tool — Anthropic’s Claude Cowork — is positioned as a more autonomous workplace agent that can plan and execute tasks across common knowledge-work flows, not merely answer prompts. In the global IT hierarchy, it is typically believed that the US invents, China builds, and Japan and Korea perfects. As India brings scale, the AI agents are believed to affect Indian companies, who have not yet become truly AI-era companies.

India IT industry body Nasscom believes that concerns that AI tools will eliminate the technology services business are misplaced and Indian companies will play a key role in helping in enabling the global transition towards the AI-assisted workplaces.

History shows automation rarely deletes demand; it rewires it. While the near-term shock is real, especially for entry-level roles, routine support work and services sold by the hour, the AI agents cannot eliminate the role of human beings. However, the advent of the AI agents threatens to disrupt India’s skilling model and eliminate the factories that roll out entrance-ready students every year.

The AI agents will change the landscape of every industry. They will threaten careers that are not laid on a firm foundation of specialisation. An era that seamlessly entwined human talent and machine capabilities has ended. Now machines have become smarter and it is imperative that humans must get even smarter.

Instead of being nostalgic about the past, people, especially youth, therefore, must accept the change and learn to work with artificial intelligence. Otherwise, they will be swept away by the AI tornado without any trace.