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AI is not destroying the job market, but changing it. There will be jobs aplenty if you update your skills

In white-collar circles, this is the best of times. The first trillionaire is just round the corner. This is also the worst of times – millions of jobs are at risk from AI. A new poll shows more than half of all Americans fear they, or someone in their family, could be out of work. In London, 46% of jobs are such that parts of them can be easily automated. And in India, global back office of IT, it looks like campus placements are no longer an entitlement. TCS chairman N Chandrasekaran has said, days of hiring at scale are over, and the future of work is equal parts human intelligence and AI.

It’s natural to be nervous when the future starts seeming so uncertain. When old certainties – STEM course, top college, campus placement, steady job – are demolished. So, as individuals, we are worried, but what about the big picture? Are we all – or most of us – going to be jobless? Is it time to decide how we’ll distribute apples, oranges, movie tickets, cars, etc, when nobody has an income to buy them? No, because this isn’t the end of work, it’s just a massive shake-up. And it’s not the first. Someone whose last memory is from the 1940s, won’t recognise 60% of jobs today. And, we don’t know what new jobs await us in 2036. But if the past is a template, there will be many more.

As TOI reported yesterday, Chandrasekaran, and SAP CEO Christian Klein, have dropped some clues. The biggest opportunity of all lies in training AI models to do real-world tasks. The global economy is incredibly complex. You could fill a few volumes just listing the different types of toys made around the world. Add clothes, shoes, cookies, hotels… But the AI we dread – whether ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Claude – takes a one-size-fits-all approach, mostly. To replace humans at supply chain jobs, say, AI needs customisation and training. And who will do it, if not humans? So, a tide of new jobs is coming. The first signs have already appeared in the hardware market. Where the talk was all about GPUs – needed to train AI models – for the past five years, now good old CPUs – essential for real-world task deployment – are rising again. We’ll be just fine, long-term. As for the short-term, new learning, retraining, and money in the bank, will get us through. Don’t neglect that war chest.