Remember the lamplighters, the men who, as darkness fell in cities like London and Paris, walked along the streets lighting one lamp after another? They vanished without a trace, replaced by centrally controlled electrical systems that made their work obsolete.
We’ve lived through technological upheavals before in recent decades and yet employment has climbed. Armies of banking employees disappeared from behind counters, but they were usually able to find other jobs in that era of steady growth. Technology displaced roles, but expanding economies absorbed the shock.
Today, though, we appear to have reached a crunch era compounded by unstable geopolitical forces. There’s the Russia-Ukraine War, the Persian Gulf conflict and Donald Trump’s America-first unpredictability. And it’s all happening as change approaches at unprecedented speed.
Consider agentic AI, a term coined only in 2024 to describe systems that can decide what needs to be done and do it. Only months ago, many people were first hearing of tools like Anthropic’s Claude and realising how fast and easy they are to use. At the same time, some of the people building these systems are issuing stark warnings.
“No-one knows what will happen next” but “some areas are, like, totally gone,” says OPENAI chief Sam Altman. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI could drive unemployment among knowledge workers as high as 20 per cent globally in fields such as coding, finance and law, and eliminate large swathes of entry-level white-collar jobs. That matters because those roles are traditional middle-class gateways. As AI completes complex tasks in minutes that once took skilled teams weeks, the fear is this wave could decimate the middle class.
Jobs at risk
At Infosys, Nandan Nilekani says companies will need top-to-bottom reinvention. Cognizant has announced 15,000 layoffs, mostly in India. At Salesforce, 4,000 customer service roles have been cut after AI began handling half of all support interactions. Across sectors, the pattern is clear: small teams can now do work that once required many engineers and managers.
For India, this carries a deeper risk. IT services, outsourcing and back-office operations created vast numbers of mid-skill, entry-level white-collar jobs. If AI now handles much of this work, companies hire fewer people. Surveys suggest 17 per cent of companies have already laid off contact centre workers because of AI. These are large-volume roles, and AI doesn’t just replace them in one company but across thousands, leaving far fewer alternative employers. For a country that needs to generate jobs at scale, that creates both a volume problem and a skills mismatch, with demand rising for highly skilled workers even as entry-level roles disappear.
Companies such as Coinbase, Atlassian and HP have all announced AI-linked layoffs. Freshworks is cutting 11 per cent of staff as AI writes more than half of its code. Duolingo is reducing headcount as AI takes over translation. Education firm Chegg has cut 22 per cent of its workforce after losing users to AI tools. At IBM and elsewhere, AI systems are replacing HR and administrative jobs. For India, there’s an added concern that its role as a global outsourcing hub could weaken if work is automated at source rather than sent overseas.
Elon Musk warns AI and robotics could eventually replace all jobs altogether. Yet not everyone agrees. Meta chief scientist Yann LeCun argues new technologies historically create as many opportunities as they destroy.
AI in army
It’s clear almost every industry, even the military, will be altered beyond recognition. This is already visible in Ukraine, where drones and robots are being used to attack troops, with efforts under way to make them fully autonomous. China, too, is changing warfare rules. At the Malan Airbase in Xinjiang, it’s developing unmanned aircraft, meaning future ace pilots may be engaged in something closer to video games.
India’s Border Security Force, meanwhile, has set up drone laboratories, while in Gwalior it has tied up with IITs to train students. The army now runs training schools where even lower-level soldiers are taught to operate and defend against drones.
All of this points to a moment that feels different from earlier technological shifts. Now, with geopolitical instability and AI advances colliding, the transition may be far sharper. For India, the challenge is greater because of the sheer numbers entering the workforce and the shrinking pool of roles that once absorbed them.
Published on May 7, 2026