“What torments of grief you’ve endured from evils that never arrived,”wroteRalph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century American philosopher and writer.Millions of workers are feeling similar.How many jobs will artificial intelligencedestroy?Andare we allworryingunnecessarily?
“The demand for human labor will not go away,” Mohit Joshi, the chief executive of the Indian information technology giant, Tech Mahindra,tellsme.The world is entering an era of technology complexity and new business opportunities. The changes are likely to increase demand for‘humans in the lead’,even though the job specifications will be radically different.
Joshihas dataand historical precedent to backuphis assertion. In the 1990s, many companies, spooked by the threat of the Millennium Bug, invested heavily in technologyupdatesas a protective measure.The bug—linked to the New Yeardatechange from the 20thcentury to the 21st—nevermaterialized, leading to predictions that tech spending would fall back to20thcentury levels. It went in the opposite directionand the‘trend to spend’continued.
“The demand for human labor will not go away.”
Mohit Joshi chief executive of Tech Mahindra
Similar momentum isapparentin 2026 when it comes tothe effects ofartificial intelligenceon workforces.“We think the productivity gains will not result in immediate headcount impacts,”Joshisays. “There is a lot of investment that will need to happen over the next couple of years to drive simplification,modernizationand optimization. And,especially on the data side, investment will berequiredbeyond the three to five years that it will take to modernize and simplify systems.”
“In the best case beyond that, I feel the complexity of organizations will increase dramatically. And,if the AI premise gets realized fully,the economicgrowth is going to be so much more significant. It should create moreopportunity, becauseyou will have a much larger landscape.”
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Elon Musk talks ofanera of abundance, ushered in byanapplied AI revolutionwhere a robot can do your shopping and energy comes from space. The journalistEzra Klein haswrittena book of the same name,Abundance,arguing that governments have a key role to play in ending the age of scarcity.Products and services will change so radicallythat demand for employees will increase.
“My own advice to myteamsis that there will always be somebody who’s a winner,” Joshisays. “And my sense is that the people who are winning will have a few attributes. The firstisthatthey will be fast, becausethere’sa gigantic premium for speed. You need to be able to pivot very quickly.”
“The second is curiosity. And the final thing is, at a time ofgreat change, leaders will need a degree of empathy and kindness to be able to carry teams along with them.”
The‘waterfall method’of changeis well known to business leaders—a sequentialplan whereprojects are strictlydefinedand workis often driven throughdivisional silos with littleopportunityforre-assessment. Most now lean towardsthe‘agile method’,a more flexible approach to project management which encourages working between teamsacross the business.
How to build AI into the agile process is the key question. “What can you do to drive productivity and efficiency in your business?” Joshisays. “What is it that you should be doing to drive revenue in your business? Because productivity is nice, but revenue is really the most important piece.”
“…at a time ofgreat change, leaders will need a degree of empathy and kindness to be able to carry teams along with them.”
Mohit Joshi
Return on AI investment is the key metric boards will want to see.“It’s very clear that organizations are going to get a lot flatter,” Joshisays. “You will have people at the topwhowill have a lot more in terms of span of control.You will havemaybe abulging middle instead of the traditional pyramid thatwe’vehad.”Employees with five to ten years’ experience will become ever more valuable.
Not everything is digital. Joshilaughs as we notice that we bothwrite with penson paper (it helps me think more clearly). Heencourages his children to read physical books, witha small pocket-money boost for each one completed.
“What I tell my kids,almost obsessively, isthatthe ability to read and write well will never go away. So read as widely as you can early in life, because you will neveragainget this opportunity of unbroken periods of time where you can read, nor will your memory ever be as good to absorb as much as you can today. Learn to speak and write beautifully, and I think everything else will fall intoplace.”
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