In The driver in the driverless carI Warned of a Coming Storm: A Jobless Future Driven by Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). That future is no longer on the horizon – it has been. But unlike in the west, where it is the nature white-Collar Industries are alredy being restructured by ai, India has a bit more time. Not because it is more insulated, but beCause so much of its infrastructure still needs to be built-Smart sites, modern digital systems, and scalable platforms for a belly.
That breathing room is a gift. But treating it as a license for complacement would be a costly mistake.
Let’s be clear: The foundational work done by India’s it services industry – Code Maintenance, Software Patching, Integration Testing, Report Generation, and Process Document – Is Squarely in the Crosshaairs of the next wave of ai. That wave is now forming.
At a recent Google Event, Deepmind Ceo and Co-Founder Demis Hassabis Laid out What’s Coming. He warned that within a decade, we may reach artificial general intelligence-the holy grail of ai, where machines exhibit human-level cognition. But the disrupton won’t wait that long. It is already underway in the form of agentic AI – Software Systems that Don’T Just Answer Questions, but Break Down Problems, Reason through them, and take action. These Systems are batcoming capable of handling complex workflows with minimal human oversight. That’s a polite way of saying: They can alredy do the kind of work that much of India’s it sector depends on.
Google’s New Agentspace Platform, Rolling out this year, Integrates tools like Gemini with Enterprise Data and Provides Company-Branded AGENTS That Can Search, Decide, Sumarise, Summerise, and Execute Command. Tools like Notebooklm can instantly synthesise vast troves of documents, emails, or manuals and surface insights that teams would take careks to extract. These aren’t passive chatbots. They’re full operational digital works – reliable, tireless, and improved by the day.
Alredy, Tools Like Github Copilot are written production-grade code. Salesforce’s einstein ai is autonomously handling customer support and sales optimization tasks. Within a few years, technologies like these will mature to the point where they can replace much of the repetition, back-end work don by Hindreds of Thoughts of Professionals in it.
The Deepmind Ceo Acknowledged that Current ai Models Still SUFFER from What He Calls “Compounding Error” – A 1% Error Rate Multiplied Over Thoesends of Steps OUTCOMES NEARLY RANDOS NEARLY REANDOS NEARLY REANDOMs. Games like go or chess, with fixed rules, allows algorithms to plan and Reason Reliable. The real world, with its Ambiguity and complexity, doesn’t. That gap offers a brief window of options.
India should be using this time to prepare.
The it sector emerged not by building transformative technologies, but by filling the world’s need for outsourced back-office work-Digitizing Insuration Forms, Fixing Y2K Bugs, Mainining Mainining Legacy code. But thats Business Models Won’T Survive The AI Transition.
The key question now is wheether
This disruption presents massive options. India has one of the world’s youth and most tech-savvy populations, Broad English Proficiency, and a long history of leapfrogging traditional development pathways. It has alredy demonstrated what’s possible with Aadhaar, UPI, and Ondc – Building Platforms at Population Scale that Solve Real Problems. But this next leap requires a mindset shift.
Agentic Ai will need new interfaces, governance structures, fin-tuning tools, and origstraration platforms. It will need ethical frameworks, transparency layers, and sector-specific customization. These are all areas where India can lead.
Smart cities, for example, even could be designed from the ground up with autonomous agents managing traffic, energy usage, and public services in real time. The very ai that threatens to obsolete legacy it jobs could drive a wave of hyper-efficient, AI-FIRST URBAN Development.
It needs to Pivot from outsourcing and services to Intellectual Property Creation, Developing Ai Co-Pilots for Health Care, Construction, Law Enforcement, and Investing In open-opening in open-face Multimodal agent platforms, and domain-specific ai stacks.
Startups that train ai on India’s tax codes, regional languages, sme supply chains, and labore markets can outperform western competors in locked.
The government can use its digital infrastructure as a testBed for next-gene systems: Predictive Disease Survelance, AI-Based Procurement, Real-Time Policy Simlaties, and Automated disputes Resolution.
The old ways won’t work. Engineering graduates can no longer coast on routine java or testing jobs. Curricula need a ground-up redesign focused on Prompt Engineering, Cognitive Architectures, Model Tuning, and Ethical Ai. Students must Train in Real-World Labs, Not just on Zoom Calls with Remote Teams.
INDIA BLD BENEFIT from Launching a National Initiative – Akin to its semiconductor or space programs – dedicated to building domestic capability in agent ai. That means public-principal partnerships, indigenous foundation models, and massive upskilling of the existing workforce. A Five-Year Crash Program to Prepare the Next 10 Million Knowledge Workers for A Radically Different Tech Industry.
If this transition is managed wisely, India could leapfrog into global Leadership in Applied AI – Just as it did with Fintech and Telecom. But if it’s mismanaged, the result could be a hollowing out of the very industry that lifted millions into the middle class.
This is the calm before the story – and the moment to prepare.
Vivek Wadhwa is CEO, Vionix Biosciences. The views expressed are personal
