AI: what are the benefits and risks for worker wellbeing, productivity, jobs and society in India?

In recent years, it has become increasingly common to see online job adverts that read something like this: “You must be open to not only learning and using AI tools but also working alongside AI agents to maximise productivity and efficiency.”

So, when reading the latest news report warning that “AI is going to replace humans at work”, it is only natural to ask, “Am I next?” However, for some employees who are already regularly using AI at work, the reality has been quite different.

Neethu A Bhagyan, a project management officer at the Indian telecommunications giant Reliance Jio, is excited about the capabilities of AI at work.

“As someone working in a PMO (project management office) role, a large part of my day revolves around reports, dashboards, data analysis, presentations, meeting notes, follow-ups and ensuring projects stay on track,” she shared in a post on LinkedIn.

“What would take hours to summarise discussions, prepare first drafts of presentations, analyse large datasets, create status updates, or structure project plans can now be done much faster with the right AI tools… the biggest lesson for me is that AI is not replacing human expertise. It is helping us focus on higher-value work by reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks.”  

She added: “Just like [Microsoft] Excel became an essential skill for professionals, I believe understanding the technology is becoming a necessity rather than a choice. I’m still learning and exploring, but one thing is clear: professionals who embrace AI today will be better prepared for tomorrow.”

Opinions like Bhagyan’s about the usefulness of AI at work are commonplace across professions, regardless of seniority or role. For many workers, AI not only saves them time but also helps them develop new and existing skills. Arvind Khandelwal, an administrative operations assistant at a startup business, says he quickly found that AI offered benefits after he first used AI for a challenging task. He was facing a five-hour deadline to summarise the themes of a white paper so an executive could use the key points for a discussion. Instead of skimming the texts as fast as he could, he turned to ChatGPT and completed the task in two hours.

Now, he uses AI to learn complex Excel formulas to build spreadsheets, transcribe podcasts, skim social media for market trends, tweak the tone of emails and check grammar. “I also use AI for brainstorming, something I didn’t have the confidence to do on my own,” he admits.

Widespread use of AI
The use of AI is no longer confined to engineering or tech teams – it is now being used in sales, advertising, HR, finance, customer support and content creation, where teams spend large amounts of time on tasks involving communication, coordination, analysis and decision-making; all areas where AI can offer real support.

The same shift is also happening in professions where the stakes are far higher than productivity gains alone.

For time-pressed doctors like Dr Rahul Singh Amritraj, who heads the Centre for Medical Innovation at the Government Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS), a teaching hospital and medical college in Uttar Pradesh, the use of AI in medicine offers huge potential to free doctors from paperwork and therefore allow them to spend more time with patients. His experiences with AI convinced him that future clinicians should receive training on how to use AI effectively, including the type of information to enter into the AI system or programme, how to frame questions and how to filter outputs. 

“My medical experience helps me know which questions to ask, which answers to trust and which suggestions to dismiss,” says Dr Amritraj. “We need to ensure that other clinicians, who already carry so much of the clinical load, can do the same with AI tools.”

GIMS Centre for Medical Innovation regularly conducts webinars on topics such as real-world uses of AI in healthcare. The sessions showcase practical applications of AI that are already transforming clinical practice, including AI-assisted diagnostics, clinical decision support, medical research, literature verification, workflow automation and patient care. Participants, including doctors and healthcare professionals, also explore how they can responsibly integrate AI into their daily practice while ensuring accuracy, ethics and patient safety. 

“Collaboration between doctors, technologists and health systems is key to responsible adoption of AI,” says Dr (Col) Brij Mohan, medical superintendent at GIMS. 

AI tools ‘must be trustworthy’
However, Dr Amritraj warns that as the use of AI tools for medical purposes grows, it is essential the companies designing and using them ensure they are trustworthy, safe and responsive to human needs. He warns there is a real risk that AI tools used for medical purposes could harm and undermine patient privacy, as it is ensure that governments and society ensure the tech companies that are developing and offering generative AI are responsibly recording, storing and using the massive amounts of personal health data they are collecting.

“Safety, validation and ethical deployment are as important as innovation,” argues Dr Amritraj. “Clinicians need practical AI literacy, not just awareness.”

The growing confidence among clinicians in the potential of AI to improve patient care is reflected in the wider adoption of AI across India’s public healthcare system.

AI-powered tools, adopted by various national programmes overseen by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, are democratising healthcare expertise across India, say commentators. For example, AI tools are helping frontline medical staff to screen patients for TB and diabetic retinopathy while supporting 282 million ‘telemedicine’ consultations nationwide. Together, these efforts have delivered measurable impact, including a 27% reduction in adverse TB outcomes and a 12–16% increase in TB case detection, say commentators.

Similar patterns
Beyond healthcare, similar patterns are emerging across workplaces worldwide. 

Generative AI is transforming the workplace at a very fast rate, but new research from the University of Vaasa in Finland suggests the biggest threat may not be AI itself – it’s workers failing to learn how to use it. The research found that employees who see tools like ChatGPT and Gemini as helpful collaborators rather than job-stealing rivals tend to be more engaged, adaptable and optimistic about their careers.

This mindset is shaping how organisations and professionals approach workplace learning, and in India, there are growing efforts to prepare workers to respond to the ever-growing use of AI at work. Research suggests that in 2025, AI and machine learning were the most sought-after set of skills professionals wish to learn, and professionals with over 15 years of experience now account for more than 40% of those enrolling on AI and GenAI training courses, signalling a shift in how leaders view the importance of understanding and gaining AI skills and knowledge.

Good news
Meanwhile, for workers who fear AI will destroy jobs and render them unemployable, there is good news. 

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Future of Jobs Report 2025 predicts that, mainly due to technological changes, this decade will see the creation globally of 170 million new jobs, offset by the displacement of 92 million positions, resulting in a net increase of 78 million jobs. However, the report warns it is crucial that businesses and governments successfully navigate the shift to these new roles. “It’s essential to ensure that workers, especially those without formal academic credentials or technical backgrounds, are not left behind, but are instead equipped with the skills and pathways needed to thrive in an intelligent economy,” the WEF stated.

However, the growing rollout of AI at work and in our personal lives has promoted warnings from some commentators that the technology threatens to dull our minds and make us stupider and lazier. For instance, a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is just the latest piece of research to conclude that relying too much on chatbots may diminish critical-thinking skills and potentially decrease our ability to discern misinformation for ourselves. 

Another study from researchers at the universities of Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) found using AI chatbots for even just 10 minutes may have a shockingly negative impact on people’s ability to think and problem-solve.

These findings resonate with Dr Amritraj’s concerns. Dr Amritraj fears that if workers rely too much on AI, they might miss out on learning new skills or risk losing the skills they have. “AI might be quick to spot patterns when analysing dozens of medical images, which reduces doctors’ workload and delays in diagnosis; or spit out a treatment plan, and it might even be correct, but it does not have the clinical wisdom that doctors have at the operating table.”