AI not going to remove jobs, it will create new tasks: NITI Aayog CEO

Artificial Intelligence is not going to remove jobs; it is going to remove roles. Some tasks will be removed, but it will create new tasks, said NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam.

Delivering keynote address at the Bengaluru Skill Summit 2025, here on Wednesday, he said, "We did a mapping. There are certain jobs which were actually not available or being asked for six months ago. They are now the top searched jobs on the internet. These jobs didn't exist six months ago, and now they have come up. So, there will be a complete change in skill profile."

Recently, NITI Aayog in its report said AI has the potential to create up to 4 million new jobs.

Subrahmanyam stressed on the need to create an 'AI Talent Mission', where AI is embedded in the entire education system.

He said that skilling is somehow still treated as some kind of an extracurricular activity, and that's the root of the problem. "Skilling is not seen as a part of education. If education is not skilling, then what is it?" he asked, emphasising the need for people who are productively employed.

Only 4% of India's workforce is skilled, and the average is 80 to 90% around the world. "You are expecting this workforce to produce the most complicated products that are there in the world. If you do not have a well-educated, well-skilled workforce, you are going to have a lot of people in low paying jobs,” he said.

The NITI Aayog CEO also stressed on the need to have counselling systems to help students to make informed career choices.

“We always look at skilling as something opposed to education, or skilling as an add-on to education, we are looking at skilling as something as an extracurricular activity outside of education. If you want to become the global talent capital, we need to integrate education and skill and it's to be done very early on,” he said.