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The Calm Before the Storm
We often hear that India’s youth is our biggest asset. With nearly 65% of the population under the age of 35, we proudly refer to it as our “demographic dividend”—a workforce that will fuel global economies, power innovation, and bring prosperity to millions. But what if this very dividend becomes our biggest burden in the next five to seven years? It’s not an alarmist thought. It’s a deeply uncomfortable but honest one.
Artificial Intelligence—especially in its generative and autonomous forms—is accelerating faster than most people understand. And while conversations around AI’s impact are happening in hushed tones within boardrooms and closed-door policy groups, the broader public remains largely unaware. Youth are preparing for jobs that may not exist. Parents are pushing children into careers that may be obsolete. Governments are celebrating short-term employment numbers while ignoring the long-term shockwave that’s quietly building under the surface.
Nobody wants to say it out loud. Not CEOs. Not institutions. Not the education system. Why would they? They still need people to operate, to code, to serve, and to sell—for now. But if you listen closely to interviews by people like Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Dario Amodei, and Mark Zuckerberg, there’s a clear subtext: they know what’s coming, and in many ways, the future is already here—it just hasn’t been evenly distributed yet.
We’re not just talking about job losses. We’re talking about the entire structure of employment for white-collar workers—especially at entry and mid-levels—getting rewritten. And India, with its heavy dependence on IT services, BPO, knowledge work, and back-office operations, is squarely in the line of fire.
I’m not writing this from a place of fear. I’m writing it from a place of realism. It’s no longer a question of if AI will disrupt the white-collar job market—it’s a question of when and how hard. My estimate? Within the next 3–7 years, we will see this disruption become painfully visible.
And when it does, we will ask ourselves—why didn’t we prepare?
This article is my attempt to look ahead, connect the dots, and urge people—from individuals to institutions—to wake up to what’s coming. We can’t afford to sleepwalk into this future.
The Silence at the Top: What They Know But Won’t Say
If you’ve been paying close attention to what leaders in the tech world are saying—Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg—you’ll notice something subtle but consistent: they’re not denying the disruption AI will bring to white-collar jobs. In fact, if you read between the lines, they’re admitting it in slow motion.
But almost no one is willing to say it outright.
And that silence? It’s deliberate.
Most CEOs and leaders today are in a strange bind. On one hand, they are watching AI tools becoming smarter, faster, and cheaper by the month—easily capable of replacing teams of entry-level analysts, coders, or customer support staff. On the other hand, they can’t publicly admit it because they still need human workers to keep the wheels turning while they refine, scale, and negotiate the societal consequences of these technologies. No company, no matter how forward-thinking, can afford to tell its workforce that half of their roles may be obsolete in five years—it would create internal chaos and external reputational risk.
A sudden admission of what’s coming would trigger internal panic and hurt their bottom line. Imagine a CEO saying, “Half our entry-level roles may not exist in five years”—what would that do to hiring, morale, and investor confidence?
So instead, they choose softer language: “AI will augment jobs,” “We’re using AI to boost productivity,” or “Humans and AI will work side-by-side.” Sounds comforting. But anyone who’s seen how past tech revolutions played out—whether it was automation in factories or software in banking—knows the truth: “augmentation” eventually turns into “replacement,” especially when profits are involved.
But we can still hear the tremors.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next one to five years, predicting a spike in unemployment to 10–20%. In his words:
“Most of them [companies and governments] are unaware that this is about to happen… It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”—Axios, May 2025
This isn’t just about job losses—it’s about the restructuring of the corporate pyramid itself. Fewer junior roles. More AI-driven workflows. A thin layer of strategic humans overseeing the machines.
And if you think these are isolated views, think again. Bill Gates has repeatedly said that AI will replace jobs just as past technological revolutions have, but at a scale and speed that’s likely unprecedented. Mark Zuckerberg has spoken about AI agents replacing work, and Jeff Bezos recently invested in AI models that aim to build and run entire applications without developers—a subtle but clear signal of what’s being automated next.
Many big firms are already testing this—quietly. AI tools are being trialed in customer support, legal research, content writing, code generation, and data entry. Pilot programs are showing encouraging results (for companies, not workers). But they’re not ready to go public yet. Not until they figure out how to roll it out without inviting backlash.
These aren’t hypothetical threats. These are calculated moves by people who understand both the power and the market dynamics of AI. I believe many of them already have versions of AI systems that could replace entire departments—what’s holding them back is not technical capability, but societal readiness and regulatory alignment.
There are two reasons I believe we haven’t seen the full force of AI in the workplace yet:
- Control. The tech is powerful, but unpredictable. Releasing it without enough safeguards could create legal, ethical, or reputational messes.
- Policy Alignment. There are likely ongoing conversations with governments—especially in the US—on how to roll this out without collapsing entire job sectors overnight.
And yet, while the public hears reassurances, insiders hear something different. When Sam Altman says AI might mean people work less in the future, or when Jeff Bezos funds AI companies that aim to replace developers with code-completing agents, they’re not predicting a distant future. They’re describing a strategy already in motion.
So, let’s not be fooled by the silence. The people building these tools already know what’s coming. They’re just buying time—time to scale, time to test, and time to soften the landing.
But for countries like India—where millions of youths are being trained for jobs that may disappear—we don’t have that luxury of time.
The Great Reshuffle: Who’s at Risk and Who Will Rise & Why India Should Worry
India’s economy has thrived in the past two decades largely on the back of its white-collar services industry—particularly IT services, BPO, software development, customer support, finance ops, and content moderation. These industries have created millions of jobs for our young population, providing upward mobility and a sense of global relevance. For many middle-class families, a job in tech or corporate services was the dream—secure, respected, and scalable.
But today, this very foundation is starting to crack. What happens when AI becomes better—and faster—at the very tasks these jobs are built around? The entry-level workforce is particularly exposed. Take a moment and think about what a fresh graduate in an IT services firm does today:
- Writing simple code, fixing bugs
- Pulling data and generating reports
- Testing software and raising tickets
- Drafting client communications or summaries
- Managing spreadsheets or validating transactions
Now consider that in few years AI can already do many of these tasks with high efficiency. GenAI tools can write and debug code, create PowerPoint decks from notes, summarize long documents in seconds, and answer customer queries with context-awareness. As these tools become more integrated into workflows, it’s not just a few roles that are at risk—it’s entire job categories.
This wave will be especially brutal in India because:
- Our services economy is volume-driven—built on large teams doing repetitive, low-to-mid complexity work.
- We produce a large number of graduates each year with moderate or average technical skills, aimed at these very roles.
- We’ve under-invested in innovation, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary education—things AI can’t yet replicate.
While AI adoption will hit global markets too, countries like the US or Germany have a more diversified economy, with stronger manufacturing, research, or product innovation bases. India, on the other hand, outsourced its growth to service-based contracts—and now those contracts themselves may be restructured or minimized.
The irony is, we celebrated when India became the “back office of the world.” But that back office is now being quietly redesigned—and this time, not in Bengaluru or Pune, but in the cloud, by AI systems trained in California.
I’m not saying these jobs will vanish overnight. But as companies start experimenting with hybrid human+AI workflows, they’ll realize they can do more with fewer people.
One AI tool + 1 experienced analyst might replace a team of five freshers. And over a few years, the hiring pyramid will invert—fewer entry-level roles, more demand for high-skill orchestrators who know how to manage AI systems.
We must face this head-on. As a country, we cannot afford to keep preparing our youth for roles that are being rewritten even as they graduate. Parents, training institutes, and colleges need a serious reality check.
This isn’t about doomsday. It’s about urgency. Because what’s coming isn’t a job crisis—it’s a skill irrelevance crisis. And that’s much harder to recover from.
Here’s the hopeful side—not everyone will be left behind. The AI era won’t eliminate all jobs; it will reshuffle them.
So who will rise?
- Real Problem Solvers
People who can think in systems, see the bigger picture, and stitch together tech, domain, and customer understanding will continue to be in demand. These are not just doers—they are thinkers, designers, strategists.
- AI-Literate Tech Workers
Not just coders, but people who know how to work with AI—prompt engineers, data orchestrators, automation architects. These are the new force multipliers. They won’t be replaced by AI because they’ll be the ones wielding it.
- People with Judgment, Empathy, and Context
AI still lacks true emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, and cultural nuance. Human traits like negotiation, leadership, coaching, storytelling, and navigating ambiguity will remain valuable—especially when combined with domain expertise.
- Makers and Builders
Those who create things—from products and businesses to content and design—will thrive. AI lowers the barrier to creation, but humans with taste, insight, and hustle will stand out.
The real threat is not AI itself. The real threat is not adapting to it.
Because those who don’t level up—those who cling to old job descriptions, avoid learning, or wait for someone else to figure it out—will slowly find themselves edged out. Many will be pushed toward low-paying supervisory or administrative roles, managing systems they don’t fully understand.
This won’t be about degrees or pedigree. It’ll be about curiosity, agility, and courage. The willingness to learn, unlearn, and rebuild.
For India’s youth, this is a defining moment. The AI wave is coming. We can either brace for impact—or learn to surf it.
What the Government Should Start Doing Now
India’s rise as a global tech powerhouse has been driven by its human capital—millions of engineers, support staff, analysts, and consultants forming the backbone of our IT and services economy. But if AI begins replacing or shrinking these roles at scale, what happens to the very model we’ve depended on for growth?
This isn’t just a corporate problem—it’s a national one. And yet, I don’t see enough urgency in our policy conversations. We’re still talking about how to get more youth into coding bootcamps, how to increase engineering college enrollments, how to place freshers in traditional IT jobs.
But what if those jobs are about to vanish or become radically different?
We need a bold, forward-looking response—and it must start now. Here’s what I believe the Indian government (and state-level policymakers) should consider immediately:
- Incentivize Tech-Augmented Manufacturing & consider possible new Industries
We’ve spoken about “Make in India” for years—but what about “Make with AI in India”?
AI-powered manufacturing is the next frontier: automated quality checks, intelligent inventory management, predictive maintenance, robotics integration.
By incentivizing startups and MNCs in this space—especially in Tier 2/3 cities—we can create new jobs where AI complements humans rather than replaces them.
Think about new industries that can thrive with AI e.g. Space, Energy or BioTech and have a focused strategy and approach to promote them.
Let’s not try to protect old service roles. Let’s create new ones in modern industries.
- Introduce Employment-Linked Corporate Incentives
Just like we have Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes for manufacturing, it’s time to think about Employment Linked Incentives—especially in tech and services.
Imagine a policy where:
- Companies get reduced tax slabs or rebates based on number of new jobs created
- Special credits are given for upskilling employees in AI-era capabilities (prompt engineering, automation, design thinking, etc.)
- Indian firms that retain and retrain talent get policy support and recognition
This way, we’re not just rewarding revenue growth—we’re rewarding inclusive growth.
- Begin Serious Exploration of Universal Basic Income (UBI)
It may sound radical, but it won’t be for long. As AI starts generating more value with fewer people, we need to rethink wealth distribution. A government-backed UBI—funded by taxing organizations that significantly boost margins through AI—can be a safety net during transition. It won’t replace the need to work, but it will give people breathing room to retrain, experiment, or recover when displaced.
Sam Altman himself, OpenAI’s CEO, has advocated for this idea as a realistic response to automation-led inequality.
India should lead the Global South in piloting it.
- Reimagine Taxation for the AI Era
As AI-driven automation reshapes the workforce, our current taxation systems—both direct (income tax, corporate tax) and indirect (GST, service tax)—will become increasingly outdated. These systems are built around the assumption that economic value is primarily created by human labor. But what happens when machines start doing a large share of the work, and profits rise even as headcounts shrink?
We’ll need to stop thinking in terms of just adjusting tax slabs—and start adopting a completely different mindset.
Here’s what that could mean:
- Decouple tax revenues from just employment numbers. If companies are generating more revenue and margins due to AI replacing human effort, they should still contribute proportionally to the economy—even if their workforce is leaner.
- Introduce an AI Productivity Contribution (AIPC): This would be a new form of corporate taxation, based not on how many people a company hires, but on how much economic output is created through non-human labor (AI systems, bots, automation pipelines). If AI boosts profit, a portion should flow back to society.
- Algorithmic Service Tax: As AI models increasingly replace human consultants, developers, content creators, and analysts, it may be necessary to introduce a differential tax on AI-generated services versus human-delivered ones—at least during the transition period.
- Dynamic GST structure for digital labor: If a service is performed by a human (freelancer, consultant) it may attract a certain GST rate; if it’s performed by a fully automated AI system, it may attract a slightly higher rate that’s routed back into skill-building and social support funds.
This isn’t about penalizing progress. It’s about making sure that as economic value becomes more machine-centric, the benefits don’t bypass society.
In an AI-dominated economy, we can’t continue with a 20th-century tax mindset. We must design a system that taxes value creation, not just human effort—and channels that value toward a more inclusive and resilient future.
- Massive Investment in Human-Centered Skilling
Instead of pouring all our funds into coding courses, we need to expand how we think about skills:
- Critical thinking
- Data + AI literacy
- Design, product building, storytelling
- Human communication, ethics, and leadership
Let’s not just train coders. Let’s train creators, solvers, mentors, and orchestrators—people who can do what AI can’t.
India still has a chance to get this right. But if we wait until the disruption is visible on the streets, it’ll be too late to cushion the fall. What we need now is imagination, empathy, and courage from our policymakers.
Let’s not treat AI as just a tech trend. Let’s treat it as the biggest socioeconomic shift of our generation—and plan accordingly.
- Tackle Wealth Disparity in the Age of AI Supremacy
Perhaps the most urgent—and least acknowledged—consequence of AI is that it could dramatically accelerate wealth concentration. The people and companies building and owning advanced AI systems will control unprecedented economic power. And unless we act early, the gap between the AI-rich and the AI-replaced will grow dangerously wide.
Historically, when new technologies emerged (like electricity or the internet), they created wealth and jobs. But AI is different. It creates wealth by removing the need for labor, not by creating new kinds of labor at the same scale. If left unchecked, this dynamic will create a small elite of AI-enabled super-producers and a large base of underpaid, deskilled, or excluded workers.
To prevent this, the government must:
- Recognize AI as a structural force for inequality—not just as a productivity tool.
- Explore progressive AI-era taxation, including taxing surplus profits generated by automation.
- Redistribute wealth through UBI pilots, skill-building grants, or community innovation funds.
- Invest in public digital infrastructure, so that access to AI tools isn’t limited to large corporations alone.
This is not just an economic issue—it’s a social stability issue. If a few companies or individuals control the AI infrastructure that drives the world, we risk creating digital feudalism—where most people are renters in a system they have no power over.
The time to act is now. Governments can’t afford to be passive regulators. They must be active equalizers, ensuring that the wealth created by AI doesn’t remain trapped at the top, but flows meaningfully into the lives of the people who make up the rest of the nation
Not Just a Government Problem—It’s Our Wake-Up Call Too
It’s easy to look to the government for answers. And yes, their role is critical—especially in shaping regulation, taxation, and safety nets. But let’s not fool ourselves: no government can fix this alone.
Society—families, educators, employers, mentors, media, and individuals—has a huge role to play in preparing for the AI era. And to be honest, I don’t think we’re doing enough. In fact, we’re dangerously complacent.
Parents are still pushing their kids into safe-sounding jobs that won’t exist five years from now. Colleges are still running outdated curriculums with no exposure to AI or systems thinking. Coaching centers are still drilling formulas into students without teaching them how to think. And many of us, even in the workforce, are assuming that “this AI thing” will take another decade to hit us.
We need a cultural reset.
Here’s what we, as a society, can start doing today:
- Start having uncomfortable conversations. With our kids, our teams, our peers. Let’s stop sugarcoating. If a career path is likely to vanish, say it. If a skill is becoming obsolete, admit it. It’s better to prepare than to pretend.
- Shift how we define “a good job.” For decades, we’ve measured career success by stability and salary. But in the age of AI, adaptability, creativity, and courage will be far more valuable. Let’s celebrate learners, tinkerers, creators—not just title-holders.
- Support each other through transitions. Job loss, reinvention, skill pivots—they’re emotionally exhausting. We need empathy in families, mentorship in communities, and peer networks that uplift rather than judge.
- Invest in our own growth. The AI revolution isn’t just coming for “low-end” jobs. It will touch all of us. We can’t rely on institutions to reskill us. We have to take ownership—learn about AI, explore its use in our work, experiment, stay curious.
Most of all, let’s stop treating technology like it’s something that “happens to us.” It’s made by people. And its impact will also be shaped by people—not just the ones who code, but the ones who care.
A Humane Reset: Let’s Shape the Future We Want
I haven’t written this article to provoke panic. I’ve written it because I believe we’re standing at the edge of something enormous—and too few are looking down.
The AI shift isn’t just another wave of automation. It’s a rewrite of how value is created, how work is defined, and how opportunity is distributed. The old rules—study hard, get a stable job, climb slowly—aren’t just fading.
They’re being rewritten by algorithms that don’t wait for anyone.
This isn’t about whether AI is good or bad. It’s about whether we’re ready or unprepared, honest or in denial, reactive or intentional.
If we act now—with empathy, urgency, and clarity—we still have time to shape this future. A future where:
- AI becomes a tool of inclusion, not just efficiency.
- Work becomes more human, not less.
- Wealth generated by machines still serves the people who made their creation possible.
But to get there, we need:
- Governments that think beyond the next election.
- Corporates that act beyond the next quarter.
- Citizens who prepare beyond the next paycheck.
The demographic dividend we speak so proudly of will only remain a dividend if we invest in it intentionally. Otherwise, it becomes a liability—one we should have seen coming.
Let’s not wait for a crisis to realize what we could have done. Let’s be the generation that didn’t just witness the AI shift, but led it with conscience.
AI is not coming for jobs—it’s coming for how we define work, purpose, and progress. The impact will be uneven, but not unpredictable. We still have time to steer the outcome, but only if we stop sugarcoating what’s ahead.
This is our window—to prepare, to adapt, and to lead with clarity and compassion.
The future won’t be written for us. It will be written by those who are paying attention now.
Let’s start the conversation and make things happen.