Economic Survey 2025: Corporate sector has to display a high degree of social responsibility with AI

AI has appeared as a big theme across the Economic Survey 2024-25, which highlights both the opportunities and risks associated with this rapidly growing technology.

The corporate sector has to display a high degree of social responsibility with respect to artificial intelligence (AI), the Economic Survey 2024-25 stated.

The survey, tabled on January 31, stated that although the impact of artificial intelligence on labour will be felt across the world, the problem will be magnified in India, given its size and relatively low per capita income.

"If companies do not optimise the introduction of AI over a longer horizon and do not handle it with sensitivity, the demand for policy intervention and the demand on fiscal resources to compensate will be irresistible" the Economic Survey stated.

It will leave everyone worse off, as the state will have to resort to taxation of profits generated from the replacement of labour with technology to mobilise these resources, ultimately harming the country's growth potential, it stated.

Some IT companies like Cognizant have previously said that productivity benefits from AI and automation are helping the company work with fewer employees.

These comments come amid growing concerns of job losses due to the increased adoption of AI across a range of sectors.

AI has appeared as a big theme across the Economic Survey 2024-25, which highlights both the opportunities and risks associated with this rapidly growing technology.

The survey states that AI is poised to surpass human performance in critical decision-making across various fields, including healthcare, research, criminal justice, education, business, and financial services. This could lead to large-scale labour displacement, particularly among the middle- and lower-quartiles of the wage distribution.

As AI develops tools that automate basic knowledge creation and processing, skills like critical thinking, advanced creativity, and specialized expertise may become the new norm, while technology-specific skills risk becoming obsolete, it said.

The survey also warns that India's information technology (IT) workforce, especially those employed in low-value-added services, is among the most vulnerable to automation.