Upskill and stay relevant to ride over the AI wave

The AI Impact Summit 2026 has made several headlines in the last few days. From national heads to CEOs of global tech giants converged in New Delhi to give their perspectives on AI’s impact on the current socioeconomic fabric of the world. While many are extolling AI-led developments as the panacea to all human sufferings, many others are sceptical about its real utility for human society in the coming years. The biggest contrast about AI’s impact came in the field of how jobs are going to be affected due to the ongoing developments. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva; AI’s impact on jobs is like a tsunami, which is powerful, fast and impossible to ignore.

The IMF estimates that around 40 per cent of jobs worldwide may be affected by AI in the coming years. And the board sees this figure going up to 60 per cent in advanced economies. But affected jobs don’t mean that all of them will be replaced. It means some may be replaced, while others could be upgraded to higher levels of work. The IMF chief also pointed out that automation is reducing entry-level jobs, making it harder for recent graduates to find work. This is leading to anxiety among young people across the world.

According to her, the respective government must manage the AI-led initiatives for equitable growth in the society and restrict the job losses. While the IMF is blunt on job losses and its subsequent impact, technology leaders are more nuanced. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei has opined that job losses would happen, but a greater number of jobs are likely to be created as AI creates opportunities. He, however, said that by when new jobs would be created can’t be said, as of now. Nandan Nilekani said that over 90 million jobs are at risk today. Jobs like front-end developers, QA testers, IT support specialists, blockchain developers may no longer be relevant, he cautioned.

However, according to him, AI will open new 170 million jobs, including those of data annotator, AI forensic analysts, AI leads, AI engineers and forward deployed engineers. One thing coming out of the deliberations at the India AI Summit is that jobs will be destroyed due to AI and new ones will also be created at the same time. The timing, quantity and quality have several conjectures. No one knows what exactly is in store. Personal and industry biases are also playing out related to this topic.

For instance, a technology firm like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Microsoft have invested billions of dollars in developing AI platforms. So, expecting truth from these companies on real impact on jobs will be foolish. Because no company will try to antagonise the societal mood by talking about job losses, who is betting big on AI adoption in the first place. Similarly, those companies, which are not developing core AI solutions and see their business model getting disrupted from AI-led developments, are not likely to speak the truth either. Because no company will talk about its core business getting disrupted, leading to job losses when billions are at stake. |

Against this backdrop, employees, especially working in the services industry, should take these commentaries with a pinch of salt.

|It is better to have an ear to the ground; see which new jobs are in demand related to their field and upskill themselves accordingly. In the AI world, you are your own saviour.