India added 311,000 AI-related jobs since 2023: LinkedIn India Head Kumaresh Pattabiraman

India added 311,000 artificial intelligence (AI)-related jobs since 2023 while globally a total of 2 million AI jobs came up during the same time, LinkedIn India Country Head Kumaresh Pattabiraman said at the Business Today India @ 100 Summit.

“Since 2023 globally there have been 2 million new jobs that are AI-related that have been added, and of those, a good 311,000 were added in India. AI engineering roles just in the last year have gone up by 51%,” Pattabiraman said during a session titled ‘Manufacturing Jobs In The AI Age.’

Pattabiraman, however, added that there is always some job displacement corresponding to the roles that are being created.

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“The way we see that displacement happen is where every job, if you were to think of a job as a list of tasks that that job demands, some of those tasks will be automated by AI, some of those will be augmented by AI, in that a human will be able to do it better, and then some will remain uniquely human, and if anything, the premium on those skills will go up even more,” he explained.

There is a surge in AI engineering roles. “What we are observing is that while there is this shift, AI engineering roles are going up. Other roles will change in many different forms. And what in India need is to prepare for this change to happen rapidly, given the rate of diffusion is so fast, and the way we do that is by constantly monitoring which skills will be more in demand and preparing our workforces for that,” he said.

Vijayawada has seen a 46% increase in AI engineering roles in just the last year, says Pattabiraman. “You wouldn't have predicted that. You would have thought, okay, it's going to perhaps take circle around Bangalore, Hyderabad, and here you see a new AI engineering hub emerge. We are also seeing in the data that professionals in this generation they are learning at twice the rate of the global average. They are spending 50% more time on LinkedIn Learning than the global average,” he adds.

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AI is not simply eliminating jobs; it is changing the tasks within them, says Pattabiraman.

He pointed to consulting as an example. An AI-enabled consultant can now analyse years of company documents, meetings and data almost immediately, identify problems faster, develop solutions sooner and even prototype them. The consultant’s job remains but the skills required to perform it have changed, says Pattabiraman.

This shift is also pushing employers towards skills-first hiring, says Pattabiraman, adding that 46% of recruiters now use skills in hiring decisions.