The India paradox: AI anxiety rises even as energy jobs surge

Niels Bohr, the Nobel laureate in Physics and father of the atomic model, once remarked, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Few lines capture our era better. Artificial intelligence has become a global amplifier of hopes and anxieties, yet the loudest anxiety — that AI will take away jobs — continues to grow despite evidence pointing in the opposite direction. The fear is simple, dramatic, easy to repeat.

India sits at the centre of this contradiction. Public debate warns of AI-driven unemployment, but India’s energy economy — especially electricity — has been adding jobs at one of the fastest rates in the world. The new World Energy Employment 2025 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) paints a picture sharply at odds with popular fears.

The global energy workforce has expanded to 76 million people, growing 2.2 per cent in 2024 — almost twice the rate of global employment. Since 2019, more than 5 million energy jobs have been created, even as AI adoption has accelerated. Electricity is now the single largest employer in the global energy system, outpacing oil, gas and coal. And India is among the countries seeing the steepest rise. AI anxiety is rising, but so is the demand for skilled work. Something in our narrative is wrong.

India’s reality check: The world is hiring, not replacing

The belief that AI will steal jobs persists because it offers a tidy storyline: machines advance, humans exit. But the electricity sector — arguably the backbone of the modern world — offers a counter-example too large to ignore. Since 2019, electricity has become the fastest-growing source of energy employment. Solar alone employs more people than any energy technology in history.

Transmission lines, grid expansion, battery installations, nuclear maintenance and renewable manufacturing have created millions of jobs across emerging and advanced economies. For India, this shift is happening at accelerated speed. India recorded nearly 6 per cent growth in energy employment in 2024 — among the highest globally — driven by rapid renewable additions, urbanisation and rising electricity consumption. Solar parks in Rajasthan and Gujarat, new transmission corridors across central India, the spread of EV charging networks and the rise of battery gigafactories are all labour-intensive undertakings.

And none of these jobs can be automated away. Automating a call centre is one thing; automating the installation of a 400-kilovolt transmission line is quite another.

No robot climbs a 60-metre tower in monsoon winds. No algorithm swaps a failed transformer at midnight. No predictive model walks into a solar field under 45°C heat to realign panel arrays.

Electricity systems are physical and improvisational. They demand judgement under uncertainty, risk-taking and hands-on skill. AI can guide decisions, but it cannot hold a spanner or secure a safety harness. This is why electricity-related employment has grown in nearly every region and why mass AI-driven unemployment does not match the empirical record.

AI is modifying work, not removing it

Across the electricity sector, a clear pattern emerges: AI multiplies human work by making systems larger, safer and more efficient.

Sensors in power plants, turbines and substations generate continuous data. AI analyses this data to predict failures, but prediction is not repair. Humans still diagnose issues, replace components and restore service. AI simply makes their work timelier and more effective. AI-enhanced grid analytics forecast demand spikes, detect faults and improve load management. But crews still rebalance flows, upgrade infrastructure and respond on the ground. AI speeds up permitting and compliance as well, helping projects break ground sooner — leading not to fewer jobs but to more physical work being done faster.

Training is changing too. Virtual reality tools now prepare linemen, nuclear operators and maintenance crews for hazardous tasks. Learning becomes faster and safer, but real work still happens in the field.

The economic truth is straightforward: when efficiency rises, sectors expand. And when sectors expand, demand for human labour increases. Predictive tools reduce breakdowns, so companies deploy more infrastructure and need more technicians. Better grids enable more renewable integration, creating manufacturing and installation jobs.Faster permits accelerate project timelines, requiring more workers in shorter cycles.

The IEA dataset shows no evidence that AI has reduced

electricity-sector jobs. What it does show is a global labour shortage: too few electricians, too few solar installers, too few grid technicians and too few engineers who understand both electrical systems and data analytics.

India’s crucial choice: Fix the skill mismatch or fall behind

India’s energy transition is among the most ambitious in the world. With over 500 GW of installed power capacity — more than half from non-fossil sources — the country is expanding at historic speed. Every new gigawatt requires design teams, manufacturing workers, construction crews,

inspectors and engineers. India’s challenge is not a shortage of

work, but a shortage of workers trained to do it.

The IEA report is blunt: India’s grid is becoming more digital, yet the workforce is not scaling at the same pace. Predictive maintenance tools require technicians who can interpret diagnostic dashboards. AI-assisted control rooms need engineers fluent in circuits and code. Solar and wind additions require installation teams skilled in safety standards, electrical systems and digital monitoring. This skill mismatch threatens to slow down the very transition powering India’s growth.

Coal-dependent regions highlight both risk and opportunity. As India shifts toward cleaner energy, technicians, machinists, fitters and operators can move into new roles — if supported with structured reskilling. This demands new curricula, regional training hubs and stronger vocational systems.

AI will not replace India’s workers. But it will replace India’s untrained workers. The future belongs to technicians who can read both wiring diagrams and data dashboards, to engineers who understand turbines and algorithmsand to operators who manage electrical parameters alongside predictive models.

Seizing this future requires transforming ITIs and polytechnics into hybrid digital-energy institutes, creating national certifications for solar, storage, grid and EV roles, embedding AI tools in vocational programs, building training hubs in coal-transition districts and elevating energy apprenticeships to mainstream aspiration.

A final reckoning: The myth and the moment

AI has been cast as the thief at the door. But the electricity sector — one of the most physical and rapidly expanding industries in the world — shows a different truth. AI is not shrinking work; AI is expanding the universe of what humans can build.

Energy transitions are labour-intensive. Infrastructure is labour-intensive. India’s growth story is labour-intensive. The only scarce resource is skill.

Countries that embrace AI as a force multiplier — not a job destroyer — will build faster and grow stronger. Those that cling to fear will misread the era entirely. India stands at a decisive moment. The myth of job-stealing AI has had a long run. The evidence is louder now: work is not vanishing; work is evolving. And nations that prepare their workers for this evolution will shape the next century.

Author is a theoretical physicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of the forthcoming book Last Equation Before Silence ; views are personal