AI may automate the routine tasks that help junior workers build experience, while the new roles created around AI may not offer stable work. A paper from IIT Madras’s Centre for Responsible AI says India still lacks enough evidence to know how those changes will affect job quality or informal workers.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The paper, How AI Is Reconfiguring Work in India, examines how AI can automate tasks, reshape jobs, create new roles or displace workers. The Hindu reports that its authors highlight entry-level jobs as particularly exposed: routine work such as password resets, basic contract reviews and boilerplate coding has traditionally helped new employees develop judgement.
The paper says large firms are better placed to absorb the costs of integrating advanced AI, while smaller businesses are more likely to depend on narrower, subsidised tools. It also flags weaker performance by Indian-language AI on nuanced, code-switched conversations. New roles such as robot operators and AI escalation specialists may emerge, but the evidence does not establish whether they provide stable employment or piecework.
Why it matters
If AI takes over the starter tasks, the question is not only how many jobs remain. It is also how new workers learn the judgement needed for more senior work. The paper says firms could redesign junior roles around supervising and correcting AI, but whether they will do so, or simply hire fewer juniors, remains open.
The evidence has further gaps. The paper says its framework is largely based on formal-sector research, despite informal work accounting for a much larger share of India’s workforce. It does not quantify the effects on informal workers, and calls for more research into wages, monitoring, stress, career progression and responsibility when AI-assisted work goes wrong.
Our read
The useful contribution here is a map of unanswered questions, not a forecast that AI will erase a particular number of jobs. India’s IT, business-process outsourcing, finance and professional-services sectors have hired many entry-level graduates; the path from routine work to skilled work deserves scrutiny before that first rung quietly disappears.
The paper is also candid about what it cannot yet measure. That makes its call for India-specific research more than a ceremonial footnote. Employers and policymakers should be asked not just whether AI raises productivity, but who gets the gains and how workers build experience afterwards.
What to watch
- Whether firms redesign junior roles around supervising and correcting AI.
- Evidence on pay, monitoring, work intensity and career progression in AI-affected jobs.
- Research that measures effects on informal workers, rather than assuming formal-sector findings apply.
- How small businesses’ access to AI differs from that of large firms.
Discussion spark: If AI automates the routine tasks that teach junior workers, should employers be expected to create new training pathways, even when that makes adoption slower or more expensive?
Sources and evidence
- AI’s costs fall unevenly across workers; IIT Madras paper flags surveillance, work stress – The Hindu (26 October 2026, 09:56 UTC)
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