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Bengaluru: Will AI steal our jobs? This is an important question that is being asked by everyone — right from freshers to experienced software professionals in the IT industry. Microsoft India & South Asia President Puneet Chandok said AI will not steal jobs, it will dissect and unbundle jobs.
"Every job today is a bundle of tasks. AI will unbundle it. And when it unbundles jobs, we will need to bundle ourselves much better," he said.
He said people are worried about automation too much, but the real pink slip is not automation, it is our refusal to learn. "This is guerilla warfare against irrelevance every day."
According to him, unfortunately, we are living with this industrial era age template, where you learn once and earn for the rest of your life. "That is breaking completely. Learning used to be like building a house and living in it forever. Now, it is changing dramatically. We will be the last generation to have stable, long-term careers," he warned, stressing that skilling will be our only oxygen mask. AI skilling is the new literacy, and this is no longer a hobby.
In his five predictions for AI, he also pointed out that digital colleagues will join the workforce. AI is a tool on the phone right now, but will become a teammate soon. The next generation of agents that are coming will be autonomous, he said.
Microsoft has announced that it is doubling its commitment of January 2025, to equip 20 million Indians with essential AI skills by 2030.
TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship CEO Nipun Sharma said for students and early-career talent, apprenticeships will play a crucial role in creating a pathway to build AI capability. "By integrating AI-linked tasks into real work; such as data preparation, model testing, workflow optimisation and AI-assisted decision-making; apprenticeships can help employers build a scalable pipeline of AI-ready professionals," Sharma said.
As industries expand into smaller cities, talent availability becomes a strategic factor, to ensure equitable participation, AI learning pathways must be location-agnostic and widely accessible, enabling youth across the country to build skills that make them employable in an AI-powered economy, Sharma added.