India has seen the sharpest increase in concerns around AI usage – with 65 per cent of people surveyed as part of the Stanford 2026 AI Index saying that products and services around AI make them nervous – up by 14 percentage points in 2025 compared to 2024.
The share of respondents expressing concern is significantly higher than the global average of 52 per cent. The Index has been prepared by the Stanford University Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence.
The concerns exist despite the fact that India pipped the US to emerge as the country with the highest relative AI skill penetration, which is a measure of how prominently AI skills feature in people’s Linkedin profiles in a given country. According to the report, India leads with a skill penetration score of 3.0, meaning AI skills appear in member profiles at almost three times the global average. The US’ skill penetrations stood at 2.13.
Replacing humans
Speaking to businessline, Aditya Mishra, MD & CEO of CIEL HR, said that the reason for such concerns could be the services-oriented nature of the Indian job market.
He said that due to their increased exposure, they have seen the power of AI and the kind of efficiency gains it can bring. “Indians are seeing the rapidly increasing adoption and are able to extrapolate that many service-oriented businesses can be automated leading to lay-offs,” he said.
Enhancing productivity
Meanwhile, there seems to be a relatively favourable opinion about AI’s ability to bring in productivity gains with 55 per cent of surveyed respondents suggesting that AI has the potential to improve their job.
In fact, the report stated that over 90 per cent of Indians regularly use AI at work, the highest among any country in the world and significantly more than the global average of 58 per cent.
Even organisations seem to be embracing this positivity with 85-90 per cent of Indian respondents suggesting that their organisation had a coherent AI strategy and supported adoption.
Published on April 15, 2026