As artificial intelligence enters offices, factories, call centres and other places of work, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras have cautioned against a simple question: which jobs will AI take away?
Their answer is that the question itself may be too broad. A new whitepaper from IIT Madras argues that the effect of AI on employment in India should be understood by examining individual tasks within jobs, rather than treating entire professions as units that can either be automated or preserved.
The paper, ‘How AI Is Reconfiguring Work in India: A Task-Based Framework for Understanding Augmentation, Displacement, New Roles and the Changing Structure of Jobs’, was released during the Industry Conclave on AI Governance 2026.
Prepared by researchers at the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI), an interdisciplinary research group at the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (WSAI), IIT Madras, the paper examines what happens when machines take over some duties while workers continue to perform others.
Prof. Balaraman Ravindran, Head of CeRAI and WSAI, said the discussion around AI and employment often assumes that a machine capable of performing a task will necessarily replace the person doing the job.
“Most jobs have tasks and only some of those can be undertaken by AI,” he said, adding that the consequences depend on the nature of the task, the industry, regulations and the cost of deploying AI.
That distinction, the researchers say, matters to workers. A call-centre employee, for instance, may see an AI system handle routine enquiries while the worker is left with cases requiring judgement or communication.
In a factory, software may inspect products at speed, but people may still be required to supervise the process and act when the system fails. In law, banking, software and creative work, similar divisions may emerge.
The paper separates four levels of analysis: the task, the job, the occupation and the wider labour market. Dr Gokul S Krishnan, Research Director at CeRAI, said that AI taking over a task does not by itself mean that a job will disappear.
Whether work is augmented, redesigned or displaced, he said, will depend upon the cost and capability of the technology, regulation, safety considerations and the manner in which organisations choose to restructure their work.
The researchers also draw attention to what they call “AI-cost geography”. The price of AI systems may determine where and by whom they are adopted. Less expensive tools could spread among small businesses and sectors such as business process outsourcing, bookkeeping and quality checking.
For the researchers, the question is consequently not merely how many jobs AI can automate. It is how those jobs can be redesigned, and whether workers will have a route into the new responsibilities that emerge.
The paper recommends affordable, task-focused AI tools, particularly for small enterprises; greater research into the tasks and skills most likely to be affected; and clearer pathways for workers to acquire new skills and move into changing roles.
The researchers argue that the future of work will be shaped as much by choices made by employers, workers and policymakers as by the capabilities of AI itself.
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