Artificial Intelligence is reshaping jobs in India by automating routine tasks, changing existing roles and creating new occupations, rather than simply replacing entire jobs, according to a white paper by the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI) at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras)
The paper titled “How AI Is Reconfiguring Work in India”, has argued that the impact of AI depends on the tasks involved, the cost of deploying the technology, the need for human judgement, and regulatory and safety requirements.
“AI rarely replaces a job wholesale; more often, it automates a bundle of tasks within a job. How large that bundle is, and whether it leads to augmentation, redesign or displacement, depends on task structure, sector, regulation, responsible AI considerations and, distinctively in India, the economics of AI access itself,” the paper mentioned.
It has identified two broad patterns: jobs in which AI performs most routine tasks, leaving humans to validate results or handle exceptions, and jobs in which humans remain the primary decision makers and use AI as a productivity tool.
According to the study entry-level workers face particular risks as AI automates routine tasks which traditionally helped employees develop the skills needed for senior positions.
The paper has cited a 2026 Cognizant-Pearson finding, based on a survey of 750 human resources leaders, that 37 percent of entry-level tasks in India are already performed by AI, compared with 33 percent globally.
It has also pointed to a contraction in entry-level hiring in the technology sector. According to figures cited in the paper, India’s top IT companies added a net 17 employees in the first nine months of fiscal 2026.
The researchers warned that automating routine work could weaken the traditional career pipeline through which junior employees acquire professional judgement and experience.
The paper highlighted that employers would need to redesign entry-level roles so that workers learn to supervise, evaluate and correct AI systems instead of relying solely on routine tasks for training.
“Most discussion of AI and jobs jumps straight from what AI can do on a single task to sweeping claims about entire professions. Our framework separates four levels within the profession – the task, the job, the occupation and the wider labour-market outcome. Seen this way, AI taking over a task does not automatically mean a job disappears. Whether it leads to augmentation, redesign or displacement depends on cost, capability, regulation, safety and how organizations choose to restructure work,” said Dr Gokul S Krishnan, Research Director, CeRAI, IIT Madras.
The IIT Madras AI Jobs report said that AI adoption is also creating roles such as AI trainers, ethical AI specialists, AI conversation designers, escalation specialists, forward deployed engineers and remote robot operators.
It referred to a Niti Aayog roadmap released in October 2025, which projected that India could generate up to four million new AI-related jobs over five years. However the researchers cautioned that the creation of new roles does not automatically mean workers displaced from existing jobs will be able to move into them.
The paper has recommended a three-pronged approach to managing AI’s impact on employment in India. First it calls for wider adoption of affordable, sector-specific AI tools, particularly among MSMEs. Second it recommends more India-specific research to establish which tasks can be automated safely and which require human judgement or oversight.
Third, it calls for structured worker-transition programmes and AI awareness education for employees, business and regulators.
The paper suggested that policymakers and employers should assess AI’s impact at the task level instead of assuming that entire occupations will either disappear or remain unaffected.
“This paper set out to move beyond the simple question of “Will AI take this job?” to a more useful one: which tasks are being performed or reshaped by AI in this particular case, when does that translate into automation or displacement, and how should the job be redesigned because of it?” the study mentioned.
The whitepaper was authored by professor Balaraman Ravindran, Head, CeRAI and WSAI, IIT Madras; VS Srividhya, Executive Head, Srilatha and Prabhakar Raghavan Centre for Information and Society (CISoC), IIT Madras; Venkatraghavan KS, Senior Advisor, CeRAI IIT Madras and Dr Gokul S Krishnan, Research Director, CeRAI, IIT Madras.
Also Read: India Faces Limited AI Job Risks, Productivity Gains Could Outpace Losses: Goldman Sachs
