Fear That AI Will Take Away Jobs is Not Right, says Narayana Murthy

Amid ongoing layoffs and rising concerns over AI-driven job losses, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy acknowledged that the “whole fear that AI will take away jobs is not right”. He believes that it will create a different kind of job.

In an interview with Moneycontrol, Murthy said, “Preparing my speech would have taken 20 to 30 hours as I am very particular about the heading, subheading, interrelation, and summary, but now, on the advice of my son Rohan Murthy, I used ChatGPT, which drafted my speech in five hours.” According to him, this increased his productivity and improved his work.

Moreover, Murthy talked about skeletons—a data entry or transaction entry program. He had the skeletons developed by the best four or five programmers of the group, while the remaining team members built upon them, adding context-specific details depending on the application, such as customer master data or order inquiries. This approach reportedly increased their overall productivity.

He noted that with the help of AI, he can now complete the skeleton far more efficiently—a task he once did manually in his 70s.

During his interview, he talked about the 1970s in Britain, when unions protested against banks, claiming that computers would lead to job loss. However, this led to the banking sector creating 40 to 50 times as many jobs. 

According to Murthy, the future belongs to professionals who can leverage AI efficiently. He believes AI is not a problem but a tool to get more productive work done.