74% Indian workers worried about AI replacing them: Microsoft report

The report said that the volume of data, emails, and chats has outpaced our ability to process it all as 76 percent of Indian workers say they don’t have enough time and energy to get their work done.

With generative artificial intelligence making headlines, 74 percent of Indian workers say they’re worried AI will replace their jobs, according to a report. However, 83 percent said they are ready to delegate as much work as possible to AI to lessen their workloads.

Over 3 in 4 Indian workers would be comfortable using AI not just for administrative tasks (86 percent) but also for analytical work (88 percent), and even creative aspects of their role (87 percent), showed the ‘Work Trend Index 2023’ report by Microsoft.

Meanwhile, 100 percent of Indian creative workers who are extremely familiar with AI would be comfortable using AI for creative aspects of their job. Indian managers are 1.6x more likely to say that AI would provide value in the workplace by boosting productivity rather than cutting headcount.

Microsoft surveyed 31,000 people across industries in 31 countries including 14 Asia Pacific markets as well as trillions of signals from emails, meetings, and chats across Microsoft 365 and labour trends on LinkedIn.

The report said that the volume of data, emails, and chats has outpaced our ability to process it all as 76 percent of Indian workers say they don’t have enough time and energy to get their work done, and those people are 3.1x more likely to say they struggled with being innovative.

Within Microsoft 365, the average person spends 57 percent of their time communicating, and only 43 percent creating. Moreover, an overwhelming 78 percent of Indian workers agree that they lack uninterrupted focus during their workday.

More than 3 in 4 Indian leaders (84 percent) say they’re concerned about lack of innovation. The primary culprit disrupting productivity is inefficient meetings, as reported by 46 percent of Indian workers who feel that their absence in half or more of their meetings would go unnoticed by colleagues.

Every employee, not just AI experts, will need new core competencies such as prompt engineering in their day-to-day life. 90 percent of Indian leaders say employees they hire will need new skills to be prepared for the growth of AI. 78 percent of Indian workers say they don’t currently have the right capabilities to get their work done.