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- Economic Survey warns AI could disrupt the Indian job market across all skill levels, potentially hindering future economic growth.
- AI impact varies by sector: manufacturing is less affected, BPO is vulnerable to job losses, while healthcare and education see potential benefits.
The Economic Survey released on Monday cautioned about the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) to the Indian economy.
Led by Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran, the survey highlighted that as AI becomes more advanced and widespread, it introduces significant uncertainty about its impact on workers of all skill levels—low, medium, and high.
This could reshape the future of work in India, potentially creating obstacles that hinder sustained high growth rates in the coming years and decades.
It further emphasized the potential for automation in routine tasks such as customer service, the use of AI tools for creative endeavors like image and video creation, the transformative impact of personalized AI tutors on education, and the acceleration of drug discovery in healthcare.
In terms of sectors, the survey mentions various sectors face differing impacts from AI advancements. The manufacturing sector experiences limited effects due to the inflexibility and cost inefficiencies of industrial robots compared to human labor. In contrast, AI in inventory and supply chain management tends to enhance rather than replace human workers.
Conversely, the BPO sector is notably vulnerable, with AI-driven chatbots potentially leading to substantial job losses over the next decade. AI’s applications in healthcare, weather forecasting, and education show promise in identifying health risks, predicting weather patterns, and assisting with educational tasks like grading and translation.
Finally, widespread AI adoption in the services sector has the potential to significantly transform employment dynamics, potentially replacing existing roles.
