Learn AI or become redundant: Microsoft India President issues stark message

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, Chandok stressed the urgent need for individuals to learn and adapt to AI-driven changes.

“AI won’t kill jobs, it will unbundle jobs. AI will unbundle transactional tasks that seem like work but are not really value adding,” he said.

He added that as AI reshapes job roles, workers must strengthen their skill sets to remain relevant.

“But when AI will unbundle our tasks, we would need to bundle ourselves much better so skilling will be the only oxygen mask. This is where it’s headed. If we are not learning AI every day, we will be redundant,” Chandok warned.

Reflecting a similar spirit day ago, IBM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Arvind Krishna had stressed on upskilling though he predicted some job losses to be paired with creation of new opportunities.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Krishna said call centre-type roles are likely to be among the most impacted as AI adoption accelerates.

“I think 50 per cent of call centre jobs, simple document-matching jobs, or people working on internal help desks such as IT and HR will go away,” Krishna said.

“There is going to be some job displacement. I think 5 to 10 per cent job displacement is likely,” he added.

Krishna stressed that companies now have a responsibility to reskill affected employees.

“The onus is on us to make sure we can give them other skills—upskilling or reskilling—so that they can move into productive jobs,” he said.

“That does not count the increase in jobs. There is going to be much more hiring and much higher productivity, but there will be some displacement,” the IBM CEO added.

Layoffs reported amid AI boom

Fitness technology company Peloton Interactive Inc. has decided to cut about 11 per cent of its workforce as part of an ongoing cost-cutting exercise, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The layoffs are expected to largely affect engineers working on technology development and enterprise-focused initiatives, the report said.

According to the source, who requested anonymity, Peloton Chief Executive Officer Peter Stern—who took over the role last year—briefed employees about the decision on Friday.

Peloton’s decision comes amid a broader wave of job cuts across the global technology sector, as companies restructure operations in response to slowing growth and the rapid adoption of AI.

Earlier this week, Amazon announced plans to cut approximately 16,000 jobs, marking another major round of layoffs as the e-commerce giant continues a sweeping restructuring effort.