The AI race is on: Are we prepared?

This article is authored by Anuradha PS, professor, CHRIST University and Divyashree, professor, Alliance University.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not the realm of the future anymore--it is the present! It is deeply integrated in the learning, working, recruitment, business management, and decision-making process of people. The worry for India is now not only about the speed at which the country can adapt to AI but also about its people and institutions being prepared for this adaptation. An early warning is indicated in the labour market.

AI (Pixabay)

According to Reuters, a 2026 survey of four out of five workers worldwide by the Randstad Workmonitor revealed that AI will impact their workday tasks. Concern about adapting to the changing workplace was amongst the highest among young workers, particularly among Generation Z. Meanwhile, the number of jobs posting for AI agent skills rose 1,587%. A total of 27,000 workers and 1,225 employers in 35 markets were surveyed. The impact is evident: AI is no longer a luxury feature; it's a standard requirement in numerous professions. This change is underway in India. While the IT sector's overall recruitment in India declined 3% in June 2026 compared to the previous year, Naukri's JobSpeak data showed that the hiring for AI-related roles grew 16%, according to Reuters. The number of job postings in 14 sectors increased 25% for AI and machine learning. This is a challenging question for India's education system: Do we train our graduates for the jobs that are emerging or mostly the jobs that are changing?

While the importance of a university education remains intact, the role of qualification as a corollary of employability is undergoing a re-write. Artificial Intelligence is changing the nature of jobs and skills are becoming a hot topic among global firms with their operations in Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India, said Reuters in May. According to the story, a report by Nasscom and Indeed showed that 40% of the employers preferred skills or skills certification or certification over degrees and another 32% said skills and skills certification or certification were the same priority. The same report revealed that 73% of HR professionals observed that they experienced a growing skills deficit. The use of degrees is not being phased out. However, the potential of a student's ability to use knowledge, and not just the qualification, is likely to be as important as the qualification itself. That is of great significance for post-secondary education. Curricula could be changed from time to time with subsequent change in professional knowledge over the years. That time has been reduced with the power of AI. The skills that are in great demand now may be automated, turned around or supplemented next year. The solution should not be to include an AI course in all of the programmes and say the curriculum is future ready. The real change needs to happen in the learning of the students.

In just seconds, Generative AI can create an essay, summarise a book, solve a number problem, make a presentation and write code. If there is a machine that can do the work, why should a student have to master how to do it? The aim of education can't just be to make people answer questions. It has to be able to challenge responses. A student should be able to analyse a financial report produced by AI and find an assumption that has not been supported. It is reasonable to expect that a management student would be able to question the strategy that has been produced by an AI tool. Commerce students must know if calculation is made through appropriate data from a machine. The researcher should be able to tell if it's evidence or plausible-sounding fabrication. AI and big data are among the top 10 fastest-growing skills identified by the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, while analytical thinking is the most in-demand core skill for the next five years. It predicts that 59 out of 100 workers will need training by 2030 and as many as 39% of current skills will be transformed or become obsolete in the next five years. The takeaway for universities is simple: AI literacy cannot be a substitute for human judgment.

The roles of India's GCCs are gradually shifting towards more niche and higher-value functions. By the end of fiscal 2026, India is projected to have 2,117 GCCs with an estimated workforce of 2.36 million and revenue of around $100 billion, according to Reuters. This opens up great opportunities for tech hubs. But it also alters the type of talent that will be needed. The demographic dividend is not an automatic skills dividend for India.

India must transcend the notion of being prepared for AI and focus on learning to use AI tools that generate. There is more to AI literacy than meets the eye. Being ready for AI should involve more than just interpreting machine-generated data—it should also involve verifying the sources, understanding the bias, safeguarding data, and knowing the ethical implications and being able to make decisions when the machine doesn't have the entire context.

This will involve changes at a number of levels:

• There is a need to have more flexibility in the curricula of universities and more involvement with industry.
• Faculty must have opportunities to undertake regular ongoing professional development in AI.
• The test for assessment should check the reasoning process, application and originality, and not just copying information.
• Employers and education systems must have more effective systems to anticipate skills that are in demand before they are perceived as skills in short supply.
• Students should also be taught to be life-long learners and not think that their educational journey has come to an end at graduation.

There are already some efforts in this direction. For example, SWAYAM Plus has launched employment-oriented learning programmes and programmes related to AI for learners and educators. These will be most important when reskilling is part of the regular school curriculum, not something that is an optional part of education that is undertaken by a relatively small number of students.

The AI race is frequently called the race between nations, companies and technologies. Another race is going on—a race between technology and people. India has a lot of strengths, with a large workforce, a robust technology ecosystem, and the opportunity to transform its education system to touch millions through digital learning. However, scale is not enough to be ready. The goal should not be to educate every student to become an AI expert. Nor should it be to protect education from the influence of AI. It needs to be so that students can leave classrooms knowledgeable in the use of technology, but not incapable of thinking. The key competency in an economy that is driven by AI could, therefore, not be coding or prompt-writing. AI can generate possibilities at an amazing speed. Decisions of humans still have to be made which possibilities to pursue. The race for AI is already underway. What India now needs to see is if its classrooms, workplaces and institutions will equip people to not just use AI, but to use it wisely.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Anuradha PS, professor, CHRIST University and Divyashree, professor, Alliance University.