India’s invisible AI boom

By most official measures, India’s productivity story looks calm. Output per worker rises slowly; wages inch up; efficiency appears steady. If these numbers were all one looked at, it would be reasonable to assume that the way work gets done in India has not changed very much.

- NISHANT SAHDEV

That assumption is becoming harder to defend. Inside offices, call centres, software teams, and government departments, work is moving differently.

Decisions are taken faster. Drafts are completed sooner. Errors are caught earlier. Coordination takes fewer rounds. None of this shows up clearly in gross domestic product (GDP) or labour productivity data. And yet, it is impacting every day work.

India’s headline productivity numbers barely register this change. There is no sudden jump in GDP. Wages have not surged. Labour productivity statistics show little sign of an “AI dividend.” To many observers, this seems to confirm a familiar suspicion — that artificial intelligence (Al) is being oversold. That conclusion may be too quick. The problem may not be Al. The problem may be how productivity is measured.

Most productivity metrics were designed for an industrial economy in which intelligence was scarce, slow, and closely tied to human labour. Output rose when firms hired more workers, installed more machines, or extended working hours. AI does not fit neatly into that model. It delivers cognitive assistance without adding labour or time in the usual way. As a result, many of its effects pass through organisations without appearing clearly in the statistics.