IIT Madras Study Warns AI Could Weaken the Ladder From Entry-Level to Senior Roles in India

Automating routine junior-level tasks could weaken traditional career pathways in IT, finance and professional services, a risk set out by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in a white paper titled How AI Is Reconfiguring Work in India that identifies seven pathways through which AI can transform work. The paper comes from the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI) at IIT Madras, and the ANI news agency carried it on October 26. It warns that automating these tasks could affect how young employees gain experience and progress towards more senior positions, and that AI can change the responsibilities of junior employees even when their entire roles are not eliminated. For Metaintro readers starting careers in India, this guide sets out what the paper argues, what other recent Indian data shows about junior hiring, and where to build the skills that the next rung now asks for.

What Does the IIT Madras White Paper Actually Say?

The researchers argue that AI's employment impact must be assessed at the task level rather than by treating entire jobs as candidates for automation. Outcomes depend on the nature of work, technological capabilities, deployment costs, regulatory safeguards and how organisations restructure their operations.

The paper was released at a recent event organised by CeRAI, an interdisciplinary research group at the institute's Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (WSAI).

The paper's central argument is that the employment impact of AI cannot be measured only by counting jobs created or lost. Changes in work responsibilities, career progression, skills and productivity also need to be considered.

"This paper challenges the idea that AI always takes away jobs. Most jobs have tasks and only some of those can be undertaken by AI," Prof Balaraman Ravindran, head of CeRAI and WSAI, said, according to the DT Next report on the paper.

Why Are Junior Roles the Weak Rung on the Career Ladder?

The paper names information technology, business process outsourcing (BPO), finance and professional services as sectors where entry-level jobs often involve repetitive, process-oriented tasks that AI could increasingly handle.

That is the ladder problem in plain terms. If AI takes over these tasks, companies may need to rethink how they train and develop junior employees. Entry-level positions often help workers learn through practical experience, and if AI performs more of the routine work, employers may need to redesign these roles so staff continue to develop professional skills and judgement.

The paper also separates automating tasks from cutting jobs. Workers could keep responsibilities involving decision-making, handling unusual situations and taking accountability for outcomes, while AI may take over certain activities. AI taking over a task did not automatically mean a job would disappear, in the view of CeRAI research director Gokul S Krishnan.

"Junior roles have historically functioned as an apprenticeship: repetitive, process-oriented tasks are individually low-value but that collectively teach the judgement a worker later needs in a senior role," the paper said, according to the ANI report carried by Asianet Newsable.

Which of the Seven Pathways Does the Paper Name?

Five of the seven are named in DT Next's coverage of the paper:

• cost-driven automation
• applications requiring advanced capabilities
• the reversal of excessive automation
• safety-driven mechanisation
• tasks demanding human judgment, regulatory accountability or capabilities AI has yet to match

Chennai's robotic sewer-cleaning systems illustrate how automation can reduce hazardous human labour while creating opportunities in robot operation and maintenance.

How Could Cheap AI Tools Change Entry-Level Work in India?

The researchers describe India's AI-cost geography. Under it, affordable tools could speed up automation in business process outsourcing, bookkeeping and manufacturing. Advanced uses such as legal research and medical imaging remain concentrated in well-resourced urban centres and large enterprises.

The paper also flags gaps between formal and informal workers, rural and urban communities, and small and large businesses. It adds that AI's impact will vary across sectors and organisations, depending on the tasks, the technology available and how businesses put it to work.

How Much Entry-Level Work Is AI Already Doing in India?

A separate study puts a number on it. In India, 37% of entry-level tasks are performed by AI, surpassing the global average of 33%, in the Cognizant and Pearson study The AI Workforce Pulse, released on June 18, 2026. That study surveyed 750 HR professionals at the director level and above, at companies with at least 1,000 employees, across the United States, United Kingdom and India, between March 23 and April 3, 2026.

The direction of change matches the IIT Madras warning. AI is increasingly taking over activities such as information gathering, documentation, routine analysis and administrative support, and 96% of HR leaders expect entry-level roles to evolve into positions where employees supervise or manage AI systems within the next five years.

The same survey is not all loss. Nearly all HR professionals (94%) expect AI will generate new entry-level roles in the next five years that didn't exist before. In India, about 80% of organisations report that AI is enabling employees to focus on higher-value work, compared to 77% globally. Cognizant hired 20,000 fresh graduates in 2025 and expects to exceed that number in 2026.

Is AI Already Slowing Entry-Level Hiring at Indian IT Firms?

Firm-level data from earlier this year points the same way, with a caveat. A study by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), supported by OpenAI and titled 'AI and Jobs: This Time Is No Different', drew responses from 650 IT firms across 10 cities in India between November 2025 and January 2026.

55% of the firms reported a decline in entry-level employment, while 35% saw an increase. Mid-level roles held up better, as 42% of firms had higher employment at that level, and senior staffing barely moved, with 82% of firms indicating no change.

The researchers were careful about cause. The moderation aligns with broader post-pandemic trends in the IT industry and cannot be attributed to AI adoption alone, and it reflects a slowdown in the pace of hiring rather than job losses. On average, across the 1,900-plus business divisions most affected by AI, those reporting higher output with stable or reduced team sizes outnumbered those with productivity declines by a ratio of 3.5 to 1. Nearly one-third of divisions reported both increased output and reduced costs.

The study also found that roles commonly seen as most exposed to AI, such as software developers and database administrators, are also among those experiencing the strongest growth in demand. The authors read that as gen AI primarily functioning as a productivity-enhancing complement to technical and analytical work, rather than a substitute.

What Skills Are Employers Asking Early-Career Workers For Now?

Hybrid profiles lead the list. 63 per cent of firms in the ICRIER survey reported increased demand for candidates with domain expertise and AI or data skills. Demand was strongest for prompt engineering and generative AI capabilities (68%), followed by data analytics (36%) and data science or machine learning (35%).

Broad backgrounds are gaining ground with HR leaders surveyed across the US, UK and India too. Nearly seven-in-10 (69%) state broad, interdisciplinary backgrounds are more important for early career talent than deep, specialised skillsets or focused degrees. 67% of HR leaders say they now value liberal arts degrees more than they used to, and 97% say soft skills are more important than ever. Employers are struggling too, as sixty-four percent of respondents believe they can't find the right talent because AI is rapidly changing what skills they need to hire for.

Fluency with AI systems is becoming a baseline hiring criterion, including in roles never traditionally defined as technical, like marketing, legal or operations. Graduates may increasingly be expected to contribute strategically from day one, rather than spending years learning through repetitive tasks, according to People Matters' analysis of the study. The same analysis points to growing value on uniquely human skills such as critical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration and decision-making as AI takes over transactional work.

Are Employers Training Junior Staff Fast Enough?

Ninety-one percent of the HR leaders surveyed report employee requests for AI training have increased in the past year, yet 46% of organizations are not proactively arranging AI training. 60% say their learning programs can't keep pace. Rajesh Varrier, chairman and managing director of Cognizant India, said the redesign of early-career roles underscores the necessity for extensive reskilling and improved managerial effectiveness. Kathy Diaz, Cognizant's chief people officer, said organizations must rethink how they hire and develop talent at pace.

Indian IT firms show the same gap. More than half of the surveyed firms reported supporting AI adoption through awareness or training initiatives, and another 38% plan to do so, but only 4% of firms said that more than half of their workforce had received AI-related training in the past year, and firms named barriers including difficulty finding qualified trainers, high costs and uncertain returns.

This is where the IIT Madras recommendations land. The researchers call for affordable, task-specific AI tools and for investment in India-specific AI and labour-market research to understand which tasks are suitable for automation and where human involvement remains necessary, and the paper recommends that employers consider structured worker-transition pathways, including training and reskilling. As Indian companies adopt AI tools, the paper suggests that preparing workers for changing roles will be important, particularly for younger employees whose early-career experience may be affected by the automation of routine tasks. A similar entry-level concern shows up in France, where permanent hiring of young people has fallen further since late 2022 in the jobs whose tasks generative AI can most easily perform or assist (translated), the trend behind fewer permanent hires for young French workers in the most AI-exposed jobs.

How Do IIT Madras Leaders Describe AI's Effect on Jobs?

The institute's director has taken a broader view. Speaking in Salem on Sunday, August 9, IIT Madras Director V. Kamakoti argued that AI will not reduce employment opportunities but is likely to create more jobs as workers learn to adapt to new technologies.

His comparison was banking. In his example, bank employees did not lose their jobs when machines replaced manual cash counting, and instead learned to operate the new technology. In his view, organisations are increasingly training employees to use AI tools.

Prof Balaraman Ravindran, head of CeRAI, stressed the need to examine who benefits from technological change and who bears its costs, and the paper finds entry-level workers particularly vulnerable to shrinking career pathways.

Where Can Indian Students Build AI Skills?

IIT Madras runs its own route. Its AI for All initiative offers courses through SWAYAM Plus, an initiative of IIT Madras under the Ministry of Education, designed to provide high-quality, employment-oriented learning opportunities to learners across India. The courses are offered in online mode in partnership with IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation.

The AI for All courses were designed not only for engineering students but also for learners from arts, science, commerce, and other fields, with certification available at a nominal fee via proctored exams at designated centers. Inviting school teachers to apply, Prof. R. Sarathi, Dean (Planning) at IIT Madras, said no prior experience in AI or coding is required, and basic digital literacy and enthusiasm to learn are sufficient. He described the courses as National Credit Framework (NCrF)-aligned and employability-focused, involving hands-on activities, real datasets, and case study-based learning.

Employers run their own routes as well. Cognizant and Pearson are working together to help recent graduates, apprentices, and mid-career professionals build skills in AI, cloud, and digital technologies, and Pearson supports Cognizant programs including Synapse and its Immersive Learning Center in Chennai.

What This Means for Early-Career Workers in India, and What Should You Do Next?

Our take is that the risk in this paper is not a pink slip on day one. It is a slower, quieter one, where the routine tasks that used to teach a fresher the job go to software and the entry-level pipeline loses its training ground. That makes judgment work worth seeking out early, on purpose.

• Map your tasks, not your title. The paper judges AI at the task level, so list what you do each week and mark which parts are repeatable processing and which need a decision.
• Ask for the exceptions. Under the paper's task view, workers could continue to handle unusual situations and take accountability for outcomes. Volunteer for escalations, client calls and reviews.
• Learn to check AI output. Future entry-level jobs could become oversight-driven, requiring employees to supervise AI systems, validate outputs and exercise judgment much earlier in their careers, in People Matters' reading of the study.
• Pair a domain with AI skills. That hybrid mix is the profile most firms in the ICRIER survey wanted more of, so build both rather than one.

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People Also Asked

Q: What is the IIT Madras white paper on AI and jobs?

A: It is How AI Is Reconfiguring Work in India, a white paper from the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI) at IIT Madras that argues AI's effect on work should be judged task by task rather than by assuming whole occupations will either disappear or remain unaffected.

Q: Which sectors does the IIT Madras paper highlight?

A: It points to entry-level roles in information technology, business process outsourcing (BPO), finance and professional services, where junior work is often repetitive and process-oriented.

Q: Does the paper say AI will cause job losses in India?

A: Not directly. CeRAI research director Gokul S Krishnan said AI taking over a task did not automatically mean a job would disappear, but the paper warns the change could weaken how young workers learn and move up to senior roles.

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