CHENNAI: Artificial intelligence (AI) could reshape India's employment landscape by automating tasks, redesigning existing jobs and creating new roles, with entry-level workers particularly vulnerable to shrinking career pathways, according to a white paper by Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) researchers.
The paper titled ‘How AI Is Reconfiguring Work in India’ was released at the recent event organised by the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI), an interdisciplinary research group at IIT-Madras's Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (WSAI).
The researchers argue that AI's employment impact must be assessed at the task level rather than by treating entire jobs as candidates for automation. Outcomes depend on the nature of work, technological capabilities, deployment costs, regulatory safeguards and how organisations restructure their operations.
"This paper challenges the idea that AI always takes away jobs. Most jobs have tasks and only some of those can be undertaken by AI," said Prof Balaraman Ravindran, head of CeRAI and WSAI, stressing the need to examine who benefits from technological change and who bears its costs.
The paper identifies seven pathways through which AI can transform work, including cost-driven automation, applications requiring advanced capabilities, the reversal of excessive automation, safety-driven mechanisation, and tasks demanding human judgment, regulatory accountability or capabilities AI has yet to match.
Gokul S Krishnan, research director at CeRAI, said AI taking over a task did not automatically mean a job would disappear. The eventual outcome depended on cost, capability, regulation, safety and organisational decisions, he said.
The researchers highlight India's ‘AI-cost geography’, under which affordable tools could accelerate automation in business process outsourcing, bookkeeping and manufacturing, while advanced applications in legal research and medical imaging remain concentrated in well-resourced urban centres and large enterprises.
The paper warns that automating routine junior-level tasks could weaken traditional career pathways in IT, finance and professional services. It also highlights disparities between formal and informal workers, rural and urban communities, and small and large businesses.
Chennai's robotic sewer-cleaning systems illustrate how automation can reduce hazardous human labour while creating opportunities in robot operation and maintenance.
The researchers recommend promoting affordable, task-specific AI tools, investing in India-specific research on employment impacts, and establishing structured reskilling and worker-transition pathways.
AI may automate tasks rather than entire jobs
Routine automation could erode junior career pathways
Affordable tools may spread faster than advanced systems
Key recommendations: Affordable AI, India-specific research and worker reskilling