AI will augment, create new jobs in India: World Bank – Crypto News

The halls of the recently concluded India AI Impact Summit in the national capital were not just filled with the usual tech enthusiasts and industry titans. They were packed with students and young innovators. This demographic energy serves as the backdrop for a critical conversation on how India is pivoting from using technology for mere “efficiency” to a new era of “capacity to serve” at a scale previously thought impossible.

In a special session of the Mint Podcast, powered by the World Bank Group, industry leaders explored the “AI jigsaw.” Hosted by Abhishek Singh, Deputy Editor, LiveMint, the discussion featured Mahesh Uttamchandani, Regional Practice Director for Digital & AI at the World Bank Group, and Krishnan Chatterjee, Head of Marketing at Google Cloud India. Together, they mapped out a future where India doesn’t just consume AI but leads its global application.

Watch the full episode below,

The end of mediocrity

The persistent shadow over the AI boom is the fear of job displacement. However, the experts offered an upside to this anxiety. Chatterjee proposed a mantra and said that AI is the ultimate filter for quality. He argued that AI is the “enemy of mediocrity”, suggesting that while those who excel in their fields will find their roles augmented, those who are merely “getting by” face a genuine threat.

Beyond the individual level, Chatterjee argued that while traditional automation focused on lowering the “cost to serve”, AI expands the actual “capacity to serve”. For a nation of 1.4 billion people, this shift is monumental. It means AI could finally bridge the structural gaps in healthcare, education and food security that have dogged India’s development for decades by providing services at a scale that human labour alone could never reach.

Uttamchandani echoed this optimism, noting that emerging markets like India might actually face lower risks of total automation than advanced economies. He pointed out that India has fewer of the routine cognitive and knowledge-based tasks that AI is currently best at replacing. Instead, the bigger opportunity lies in augmentation, by empowering teachers in remote villages or nurses in rural clinics with AI tools that allow them to perform at a much higher level of precision and reach.

Small AI and the digital public stack

While Large Language Models (LLMs) grab the headlines, the speakers emphasised that “Small AI” in the form of specialised applications can be the true game-changer for India’s grassroots. Uttamchandani highlighted how the World Bank sees AI transforming the lives of rural artisans and farmers. For instance, a female artisan from a rural area who previously could only sell her wares in the immediate village now has access to digital platforms and payment mechanisms. This transaction creates a digital data trail, building a credit history for someone who never had one before, which AI can then use to automate fair credit decisions.

India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) – comprising of Aadhaar, UPI and DigiYatra – has already become a global case study and is often referred to as the India Stack. The next phase involves layering AI on top of this planet-scale data foundation. Chatterjee noted that India is already working with partners to package this infrastructure into a “DPI in a box” for export to other countries. This data layer allows for the creation of autonomous agents that can handle complex commerce and identity tasks that remain impossible in regions without such integrated systems.

This evolution is already showing practical results across various sectors. In healthcare, for instance, AI systems are being deployed to read chest X-rays and provide diagnostic conclusions in areas lacking specialists. In agriculture, crop advisory services and yield prediction tools are putting high-level data into the hands of small-scale farmers. Even in education, platforms like Diksha are using AI to work across multiple languages and tailor learning plans for students who were previously underserved by traditional schooling.

The road ahead

Despite the excitement, the transition is not without its hurdles. The move toward Agentic AI, where AI acts autonomously as an agent, brings with it concerns of cybersecurity. Chatterjee noted that the havoc that could be wreaked if the security is not handled well is his deepest fear. As India onboards its most vulnerable citizens into financial services and onto the internet, the responsibility to protect them from online threats becomes a primary mission for both the government and the private sector.

To maintain its lead, the experts suggested that the Indian government must continue its AI Mission, focusing on the delicate balance of AI sovereignty. This involves ensuring the privacy rights of individuals are protected while allowing data to flow freely enough to power and train local models. Striking this balance across a diverse, federated system like India will be a challenge that requires deep coordination between central and state governments.

As the summit concluded, the experts offered a bold closing strategy for India’s future. They suggested that India should “share seamlessly” its successes and digital blueprints with the world, while simultaneously “stealing shamelessly” the best global ideas to deploy them at scale. In summary, India is no longer just a back-office for global tech, but the laboratory where the world’s most “impossible” development problems are being solved through the intelligent application of AI.