India needs faster AI upskilling, Coursera co-founder says

India needs to accelerate AI upskilling to prevent job disruption, according to Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera and founder of DeepLearning.AI.

Ng, an AI pioneer who previously worked at Google Brain and Baidu, said AI is transforming the skills required across sectors.

He warned that without rapid upskilling, significant job displacement could occur as AI tools make many roles more efficient.

Ng also criticized claims of imminent artificial general intelligence (AGI), stating current models are not close to human-level intelligence.

He highlighted the importance of reengineering workflows and managing workforce change to fully benefit from AI advancements.

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

The push for fast AI upskilling in India’s $280 billion IT services sector is being stressed, yet the size of the gap is not being put in numbers.
The share of the IT services workforce with advanced AI skills is not being stated, so a starting point for measuring progress is missing.
Government figures say 320,000 people have enrolled or trained in AI and Big Data Analytics as of August 2025, but the comparison with the sector’s millions of workers is not being laid out 1.
Demand is also being left vague. While 88% of enterprises have dedicated AI budgets, the roles being hired for and the skill mix across teams are not being spelled out 2.

IT services providers and investors can lean into the work companies face when rolling out AI tools across internal operations.
With 76% of enterprises treating their own IT operations as the first test bed for AI agents, spending is likely to favor business-to-business (B2B) back-office automation over front-end features 2.
Bigger gains often come from redesigning whole workflows. That usually needs leadership support, not one-off fixes.
Firms that sell data governance tools, meaning how data is managed, secured, and shared, can remove a common adoption blocker since 68% of companies rank it as a priority 2.