Nobody is safe, not even plumbers and electricians, says new study on AI job disruption

Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS

After OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, something changed. The age of artificial intelligence (AI) had begun. And experts were already studying the potential impact AI could have across jobs. One Cognizant report in 2023 had suggested that generative AI could impact 90 per cent of jobs by 2032. But as it turns out, AI seems to have managed to disrupt jobs at a much quicker pace.

In a new report, Cognizant states that generative AI has managed to create an impact in the workplace much earlier than expected. 93 per cent of jobs are now classed as AI-capable with a whopping 30 per cent facing existential change. That is, what was earlier expected to take 9 years, has happened in less than 3.

This new report comes at a time when tech companies have been making sweeping layoffs. Meta, Oracle, Amazon, and many more have laid off thousands of workers this year alone. According to layoffs.fyi, so far around 115,907 workers have been laid off in 2026. In 2025, this number stood at 124,636.

Nobody is safe from AI disruption

While it may seem that AI largely impacts jobs that can be automated – such as services or coding – but Cognizant’s head of research Ollie O’Donoghue believes that almost everyone may be at risk. He said, as quoted by Fortune, “Nobody’s safe.”

O’Donoghue claimed that even the jobs of electricians or plumbers will need to evolve in the age of AI. While plumbers will still need to do repairs, a lot can be done by AI soon. He said, “You’ll still need someone to turn the wrench, no doubt, but the actual process of plumbing and the value that’s added will change a little bit.”

As per the report “a multimodal reasoning agent today could notice a damp patch on a wall, infer a leaking joint, draft a repair plan and even generate an invoice or parts list”. It added that “the plumber still fixes the pipe, but the inspection, diagnosis and supportive actions that lead up to or follow it can increasingly be assisted by AI.”

Do note that in March this year, Anthropic had released a study which showed 22 occupations that may remain relatively unaffected by AI including installation and repair work.

AI can take away trillions from humans

According to the report, average exposure to AI scores across occupations are now 30 per cent higher than what it had forecast for 2032. While its original analysis pointed to an average 2 per cent annual increase in exposure scores, the latest update puts that rise at 9 per cent a year.

The company said this could mean about $4.5 trillion (roughly Rs 427 lakh crore) worth of labour shifting from humans to AI in the US alone.

AI may create new jobs

While the report does ring alarm bells over the future of current jobs, Cognizant chief business officer of AI Sushant Warikoo, claims that we may see new “value pools” being created thanks to AI. He added, “When that happens, it creates a lot more social economic development–that creates new jobs, new roles in the market.” Though to make this happen, he argues, companies will need to truly adapt to AI via an “operational model change”.

The report comes at a time when tech leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have started to change their views on AI potentially taking over white-collar jobs. During Nvidia’s GTC keynote on Monday, CEO Jensen Huang claimed that the narrative of AI taking over jobs was “complete nonsense.”

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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA