{"slug": "the-shock-of-the-new", "title": "The Shock of the New", "summary": "Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, proposed in an essay that 40% of jobs in an AI-driven future should be reserved for humans even when machines are more capable, sparking debate on job reservations beyond India. The essay argues India must shift policy focus from redistribution to technology and growth, investing in R&D and skills rather than welfare and caste-based reservations, to prepare for the AI era.", "body_md": "# The Shock of the New\n\nTHERE IS A NEW debate on reservations in jobs. Far away from India. Triggered in an essay by Microsoft founder Bill Gates in which he suggests that 40 per cent of jobs in an AI future should be reserved for human beings even when machines are more capable. Hopefully, this should shake India out of its own debate on reservations which continues to be anchored in the past.\n\nThe fact is that government jobs and government educational institutions are not the future of either jobs or education. And caste-based reservations are not the future for those who remain excluded by social hierarchies. The creamy layer has cornered them. The real task at hand is to create good jobs for everyone. Wearing the lens of the past isn’t going to lead to success in an AI future.\n\n## What Rahul Gandhi Wants\n\n28 Aug 2026 - Vol 05 | Issue 35\n\nHe is desperately courting the angry youth. That won't be enough to credibly challenge Modi\n\n[Read Now What Rahul Gandhi Wants](/magazine/what-rahul-gandhi-wants)\n\nPerhaps because India is not at the forefront of the AI revolution, people at large haven’t yet grasped the profoundness of the change that is happening. Those at the forefront, whether it is Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Dario Amodei, are both excited by and fearful of the power of AI. Of the many things that will change, there is little doubt that the nature of jobs will be one. So will the nature of education. The road to success will require deft steering—of harnessing the enormous power of AI to do things better, smarter and faster while mitigating its potentially damaging impact on human beings.\n\nIn countries leading the AI revolution, a lot of the policy discourse is increasingly focused on examining that future, even critiquing it. There are already big productivity gains in business reflecting in economic growth. But there is backlash too—for example, against the impact of power and water-hungry data centres and against jobs being lost to AI across different sectors, particularly at entry-level positions. None of this is easily resolved but at least the attention of key stakeholders is on charting out a course with maximum benefit and least damage.\n\nSo far, India has negligible presence in the key parts of the AI value chain, whether its large language models (LLMs), cutting edge semiconductor chips, or data centres. But it is becoming an active consumer, which by itself has the potential to be highly disruptive. America and China are entering the new epoch as high-income countries (the US is considerably higher) and at the cutting edge of technology. India is a low middle-income country without a large innovation ecosystem. It hasn’t entirely succeeded in solving the challenge of good jobs in a pre-AI era. And it may soon be presented an entirely different challenge of good jobs in the AI era.\n\nWhat are India’s prospects? Good, if we focus on the right things. Above all, what is required is a shift in policy focus from redistribution (whether reservations or freebies) to technology and growth. Instead of sinking money in welfare, which will always be very basic, government should be pumping money into R&D. Instead of over-regulating entrepreneurs, it should set them free to build every part of the AI value chain in India. Rather than focus on entrance tests in higher education, government should focus on a new pedagogy and skills—the latter may be a better guarantor of jobs than a university education in the future.\n\nWhile doing all of that, it would also be a good idea to do away with the complex bureaucracy that hobbles conventional businesses. There may still be a window of about a decade for good jobs in manufacturing which can significantly lift India’s per capita income and living standards before machines become omnipresent.\n\nAs an ancient civilisation with a troubled history, India, in its present, tends to keep a keen eye on its past. It’s time to be future-ready.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-shock-of-the-new", "canonical_source": "https://openthemagazine.com/business/the-shock-of-the-new", "published_at": "2026-09-04 09:10:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-04 09:52:30.692921+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Bill Gates", "Microsoft", "Elon Musk", "Dario Amodei", "India"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-shock-of-the-new", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-shock-of-the-new.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-shock-of-the-new.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-shock-of-the-new.jsonld"}}