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Mumbai: As Indian companies ramp up spending on artificial intelligence (AI), a shortage of skilled talent to deploy AI solutions is emerging as one of the biggest challenges to the country\u2019s adoption of the technology, State Bank of India (SBI) chairman C.S. Setty said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI think we need a large number of skilled manpower to deploy the AI itself. I think this is something what we are really facing in the market now, that while AI capital investments, everybody is ready for, the availability of the manpower to deploy these AI tools is actually becoming a challenge,\u201d Setty said at the Citi India 2026 event.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
His comments come amid growing concerns that rapid AI adoption<\/a> could displace jobs and weaken India’s demographic advantage. Setty, however, said the bigger challenge is workforce adaptation rather than job destruction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Setty also said automation has created a disconnect globally between capital investment and job creation, particularly in manufacturing. \u201cThe amount of capital invested and the jobs created always is a disconnect across the globe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However, he expressed confidence that India\u2019s services sector and engineering talent pool would help the country navigate the transition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Referring to concerns that AI could replace coding jobs, he said fears of widespread displacement may be overstated. \u201cA lot of people said that in the tech IT job, for instance, the coding moving to AI, a lot of people will lose jobs. But in IT sector<\/a>, 99% of the workforce are engineers. And these are the people who can be re-skilled in a short span of time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nJob fears<\/h2>\n