At the recent "Invest Karnataka 2025" conference held in Bangalore, numerous leaders from the technology industry gathered to discuss the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in India and its impact. Manish Gupta, Senior Director of Google DeepMind, delivered an important speech at the conference, emphasizing the need to establish appropriate regulations alongside technological innovation to ensure responsible development.
Image Source Note: The image is AI-generated, licensed by service provider Midjourney
Gupta pointed out that as India makes significant progress in building foundational AI models, there is growing attention on the impact of AI on the job market. He stated that the responsibility of the tech industry is to develop AI that enhances human capabilities rather than replaces them. "In the future, everyone will have a powerful and versatile assistant, as well as specialized assistants to help them learn skills, maintain health, manage shopping, and more." He encouraged everyone not to fear using such AI assistants.
Joining Gupta were Ranganath Sadasiva, Chief Technology Officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise India, and Caleb Munigety, Head of AI at Bosch India, both of whom agreed with this viewpoint. Munigety noted that AI will not eliminate jobs but will transform job roles, much like the Industrial Revolution transitioned people from fields to factories.
Despite the optimistic outlook from industry experts, there are concerns that AI may pose a threat to millions of software developers. According to a recent research report, the application of AI in the workplace primarily focuses on software and mathematical tasks, with relatively fewer operations involving physical environments. Among the use cases, 57% indicate that AI is mainly used to enhance human capabilities, while 43% is utilized for automation.
Nonetheless, the current situation is that AI tools still primarily serve as assistants to humans. For example, an autonomous software development tool named "Devin" is considered capable only of performing tasks suited for entry-level software engineers; it performs well on fixed, well-defined tasks, but its performance greatly varies outside of those boundaries. Many developers believe that current AI tools still require human supervision to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of the code.
Some platforms, such as Cursor, are rapidly growing, demonstrating the market potential for tools that enhance software development. Although there are concerns about AI's application in software development, many developers still view AI more as a partner than a replacement.
Key Points:
💡 AI should enhance human capabilities, not replace human jobs.
🔄 AI will change rather than eliminate job roles, with historical precedents for such transformations.
🔍 Current AI tools in software development still require human supervision and have limited performance.
