A vast majority of young professionals fear AI disruption: survey
disruptions in technology, particularly with artificial intelligence, are impacting their work. Parallelly, AI and machine learning (AI/ML) have emerged as the most sought-after skills for upskilling in FY25, according to survey data from skilling platform Great Learning, accessed exclusively by ET.
Job displacement and insecurity are major concerns, said Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder, Great Learning. “Many of these respondents are already seeing AI take over jobs — maybe not their specific job, but they do fear that if they don’t upskill in AI, they are likely to be left redundant in their organisation,” Nair said.
IT services, consulting companies and global capability centres (GCCs) stand to see significant gains in a short span of time by adopting more Gen AI, Nair pointed out. Moreover, some clients may well be demanding fewer FTEs (full-time equivalents) deployed per project, owing to the productivity and efficiency gains resulting from AI.
In terms of upskilling, while companies earlier focused their generative AI training only on technical teams, in FY25, they want to expand it to functions like operations, customer service, human resources, finance, marketing and more, Nair added.
Gen AI is becoming more pervasive and will soon be a tool everyone is expected to know how to use. The deeper skillset that needs to be built, however, is in AI and machine learning, which is much harder and takes much more time to learn, he said.
Source: Upskilling Trends Report 2024-25 and platform data from Great
