AI Is Not the Enemy, But Friend

Fearmongers have an old habit. We greet every new machine as though it were a foreign invader.

When computers arrived, they were accused of plotting mass unemployment. When economic reforms began, we were warned of national ruin. Now artificial intelligence stands at the dock, charged with conspiracy against the Indian middle class.

The prosecution has been energetic. In Parliament and outside, Rahul Gandhi has sounded the alarm. AI, he suggests, will wipe out coding jobs, dismantle back-office work, and turn India’s demographic dividend into demographic despair. The anxiety is framed as a moral question: who will protect the young engineer, the call-centre worker, the analyst?

It is a fair question. But it deserves a careful answer, not a theatrical one.

Let us begin with humility. No one — not technologists, not politicians — can predict with certainty how this revolution will end. History refuses to behave according to press statements. When the mechanised loom replaced the handloom, many livelihoods were destroyed. That pain was real. But out of that upheaval arose industries and professions no one had foreseen — large-scale textile manufacturing, chemical dye and colour production, ready-made garment factories, global export houses, fashion design, retail chains, advertising, logistics networks and even modern banking systems that financed trade. Work changed its shape; it did not evaporate.

The same may be true of AI.

There is a more fundamental inquiry that our debates avoid: who is the economy for? If it is for humans — and surely it is — then humans will remain at its centre. Machines may generate text, analyse data, draft code. But they do not consume, they do not aspire, they do not vote. An economy without human agency is not an economy; it is a laboratory experiment.

So far, the evidence does not justify apocalypse. Several years into the generative AI surge, we have not witnessed a collapse of software employment in India. Productivity tools have proliferated. Yet hiring has not ceased. Even in the United States, the feared white-collar extinction has not materialised on any grand scale. What we see instead is transition.

The coder becomes a problem-solver. The engineer moves closer to the client. The routine shrinks; judgment expands.

This is uncomfortable. It demands new skills. It exposes educational weaknesses. But it is not extinction.

India’s advantage lies where our critics rarely look: youth. A 23-year-old graduate from Indore or Tirunelveli does not regard a new tool as betrayal. She experiments. She learns. Within days, she is productive. Contrast this with ageing workforces elsewhere, where each technological shift feels like one disruption too many. Demography is not a slogan; it is an asset — if we use it.

There is also a peculiarly Indian strength in frugality. We built digital payment infrastructure at a fraction of global costs. We scaled identity systems to a billion people without the extravagance that richer nations consider normal. Efficiency is not a weakness; it is a discipline. If AI development globally is a race fuelled by billions of dollars and limitless energy consumption, India’s instinct will be different: smaller models, sharper focus, wider access.

That is not backwardness. It is prudence.

The concern about hyperscalers — about billions from Google, Microsoft, or Amazon — is understandable. Who owns the strategic layer? Who controls data, algorithms, distribution? These are questions a sovereign nation must ask. But engagement is not surrender. Infrastructure built on Indian soil is subject to Indian law. Investment brings knowledge, employment, and leverage. Isolation brings irrelevance.

Opposition leaders are correct to demand safeguards. They must question whether our colleges are ready, whether tier-two and tier-three students will be included, whether inequality could widen. Democracy requires that scepticism.

What it does not require is fatalism.

If young Indians are told repeatedly that their future has already been automated away, they may begin to believe it. And a society that believes itself defeated before the contest has begun rarely triumphs.

The wiser course is neither complacency nor panic. It is preparation. Solid foundational skills remain non-negotiable. AI can assist with multiplication; it cannot replace understanding. The young must experiment with these tools, not fear them. Mastery lies in using technology without surrendering judgment.

India has survived empires, economic crises and ideological experiments. It will survive algorithms too. The question is not whether AI will change us — it will. The question is whether we respond with maturity or melodrama.

Fear makes for compelling speeches. Confidence builds nations.