On September 17, at an event in New Delhi, Nitin Seth — co-founder and CEO of IT services firm Incedo — marked one year since the release of his bestselling book "Human Edge in the AI Age" by launching two things at once: the book's Hindi edition, titled "AI Yug Mein Manaviya Shreshtha," and a personal AI assistant called NitinSeth.AI. The evening included a panel on "AI for Bharat" moderated by journalist Sonia Singh, featuring Digital India Corporation's MD and CEO Akhil Kumar, Garuda Prakashan founder Sankrant Sanu, and environmentalist Peepal Baba. But the part everyone kept quoting afterwards was what Seth said about jobs.
01.The 35 percent number nobody in an office wants to hear
Seth cited research suggesting that 35 percent of jobs could be displaced by AI over the next 15 years, with white-collar roles among the hardest hit. And the profession he named as most exposed today? Software development — a sharp reversal from a couple of years ago, when computer science was seen as the safest bet for Indian graduates. His reasoning was one line long: "Most of the code in the world today is being generated through English language prompts." After software, he placed operations and customer support roles, followed by research-heavy knowledge work in law, investment banking and consulting.
This sits inside a larger debate we've been tracking. We covered what CEA's Nageswaran said about AI eating entry-level jobs, and the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs numbers cited in a recent Financial Express editorial paint a two-sided picture: 170 million new jobs and 92 million displaced globally by 2030 — a net gain of 78 million, but a brutal shuffle for the people inside it. For context, India had roughly 4.2 lakh AI professionals in 2024 against a domestic AI market projected to touch $17 billion by 2027. The demand is real; the question is who captures it.
If English prompts are quietly becoming the most valuable programming language, prompt skill is the new job security. That's exactly why the prompting chapters in our GPT-6 Astra — Zero to Hero Guide matter right now — they teach you to direct AI precisely, not just chat with it, which is the difference between using the tool and being replaced by someone who does.
02."Sovereign AI is not going to create jobs. Not at all."
Here's the part of Seth's argument that stings. India has been pouring money into sovereign AI — we tracked how IndiaAI's foundational model funding reached its final stage — and Seth isn't against that. His point is narrower and colder: sovereign AI infrastructure won't employ many people, because core AI companies simply don't need headcount. His evidence: Anthropic, which he described as generating roughly $70 billion in revenue with about 4,000 employees — a headcount, he noted, close to that of his own company, Incedo. The math is uncomfortable for a country that has long equated technology booms with mass hiring.
Honestly, what surprised me most wasn't the number itself — it's how rarely anyone in India's policy conversation says it out loud. We keep framing AI the way we framed IT services: build the ecosystem, and the jobs will follow. Seth's argument is that this time, they won't. Not at that scale.
03.Capital isn't the constraint anymore. Depth is.
According to Seth, the startup side of the story has flipped too. Capital is no longer the constraint it once was for Indian founders — in his assessment, investors are sitting on more funding than they can deploy. What's missing is depth: too many young founders have energy but shallow ideas, lacking the industry expertise or deep technical grounding needed to build lasting companies. He linked part of this gap to the relatively shallow state of computer science education in India compared with ecosystems like Stanford or UC Berkeley, where academia and startups are tightly intertwined.
04.Why Seth still thinks founders win this decade
Despite all of this, Seth framed the disruption as an opportunity, not just a threat. His logic: when change is incremental, incumbents usually win; when disruption is severe, outsiders take over. That dynamic is what makes this moment ripe for entrepreneurship. In his words, the AI age marks the end of the era of jobs but, more importantly, the beginning of the era of entrepreneurship. That's the premise behind his book's central framework, POSSIBLE — an eight-part model built around problem solving, openness to change, spirituality, sports, impact, balance, leadership and entrepreneurship.
05.The two worries he called close to existential
Seth flagged two longer-term concerns he described as near-existential. One is the possibility that AI-driven wealth concentrates among a small group while large populations, supported by some form of universal basic income, remain comfortable but economically disengaged. The other is the accelerating AGI debate, following recent public comments from OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei about the risks of AI systems gaining independent agency. "If AI begins to have agency, that means AI creates AI without human control," Seth said. "That could be quite something."
Worth noting: the Hindi edition and NitinSeth.AI — which answers questions on digital transformation, data, AI and leadership, and will roll out in multiple Indian languages in the coming months — are themselves part of his answer, extending these ideas beyond English-speaking metro audiences.
Key Takeaways
- Seth cited research that 35% of jobs could be displaced by AI over the next 15 years, with software development most exposed today
- "Most of the code in the world today is being generated through English language prompts"
- Sovereign AI won't create many jobs — Anthropic generates ~$70 billion in revenue with ~4,000 employees
- For Indian startups, capital is no longer the constraint — depth and domain expertise are
- His prescription: a startup explosion — the AI age ends the era of jobs and begins the era of entrepreneurship
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Nitin Seth say sovereign AI won't create jobs?
Incedo CEO Nitin Seth argues that AI companies generate enormous revenue with tiny headcounts — citing Anthropic's roughly $70 billion revenue with about 4,000 employees. His point is that building AI capability does not automatically create mass employment, so India should not rely on sovereign AI projects for job creation.
Which jobs are most exposed to AI displacement, according to the research Nitin Seth cited?
Seth cited research suggesting 35% of jobs could be displaced by AI over the next 15 years. He named software development as the most exposed profession today — because most code is now generated through English-language prompts — followed by operations and customer support roles, and research-heavy knowledge work in law and investment.
What is Nitin Seth's solution for India's AI jobs problem?
His answer is a startup explosion. Seth described the AI age as the end of the era of jobs and the beginning of the era of entrepreneurship, and launched the Hindi edition of his book 'Human Edge in the AI Age' ('AI Yug Mein Manaviya Shreshtha') along with a personal AI assistant called NitinSeth.AI.
What This Means for You
If you're a student, the safest degree is no longer the safest career — Seth's whole argument is that the software job you were aiming at is the one most exposed to prompts. If you're a working professional in operations, support, or research-heavy roles, start building the one skill that compounds: directing AI well, because the person who prompts better than you is the actual competition. And if you've been sitting on a startup idea, this is your nudge — the capital is waiting and the incumbents are slow. The practical first step for all three is the same: get genuinely good at AI, and our GPT-6 Astra — Zero to Hero Guide is the structured, no-fluff way to do it — prompting, agents, cost optimization, business ideas and safety, in one 30-day roadmap. And if your next step is a job rather than a startup, our AI Job Hunt Kit is built for exactly that — 60 copy-paste prompts for your resume, LinkedIn, cover letters, interviews and salary negotiation, at ₹99. And if freelancing feels more your speed than a campus job, our Freelancer Get-Paid Kit sorts out the contracts, invoices and follow-ups that keep clients paying, while The Freelancer Tax & Money Playbook covers the FY 2026-27 tax side so you actually keep what you earn. And for daily practice between applications, our free Digitalaikart AI assistant makes a decent sparring partner — ask it to quiz you on AI concepts or review your pitch, no sign-up needed to start.
One more thing — if you are still getting up to speed on GPT-6 Astra itself, our complete GPT-6 Astra walkthrough explains the model, the pricing and the privacy basics in one sitting.
And when the first offer letter does land, our First Salary Playbook decodes payslips, FY 2026-27 tax, EPF, insurance and SIPs — so year one of earning builds actual wealth instead of habits you'll undo later.