The spectre of a world orchestrated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) looms over discussions at coffee tables, in industry, and in the corridors of power. Opinions about what the near future portends range widely. While some suggest that superintelligence is only a few years away, others say it is many years away. Questions about education too are frequent, but mostly with respect to teaching and examinations. Only a few bring up preparedness for the jobs of the near future.

The nature of work at every level is changing rapidly and unpredictably. It is not just that ‘vibe coding’ threatens to render much routine coding obsolete. With wisely configured agents and other tools, even important work can be made routine, leaving fewer employees to provide careful oversight.

An overhaul of work

The same acceleration is coming to manufacturing, and will affect every sector in which India has strengths. In generic drugs and biosimilars, AI is reshaping molecule screening and formulation, while robotics and machine vision will increasingly handle synthesis and quality control. Vaccine development and manufacture will also change visibly: AI can help design antigens and predict immune responses, while robotic bioreactors, automated fill-finish lines, and AI-managed logistics will make production faster, cleaner, and more precise.

Indian industry will no doubt pivot to meet these challenges. Companies may survive and prosper, but their employee profiles will change dramatically. Many entry-level positions will disappear, but people with deep domain expertise will still be needed, and such expertise cannot magically be acquired at the point of entry.

The earlier technological revolutions were met by extending education: from basic literacy to primary school, then high school, college and, increasingly, professional master’s degrees. Each transition asked people to acquire and retain more knowledge before entering the workforce. That strategy is now running out of road. As AI systems advance, the comparative need is no longer for humans to simply store ever more information in their heads. It is to know what must be understood deeply, what can be retrieved when needed, and how to learn quickly in unfamiliar situations.

How education must change

Education must therefore do two things that may appear contradictory: thin out what it teaches, while providing far more opportunities to learn on the fly. The objective is not less rigour but a different kind of rigour — selection, synthesis, judgement and adaptation. Students need repeated experience in confronting problems whose answers are not in the syllabus, finding the relevant knowledge, and using it with judgement.

The task before our education system is to prepare young people for an unpredictable future. There are no easy fixes. For reasons of accident and design, our higher-education system resembles a bowl of seviyan payasam (vermicelli pudding): there are gems of raisins and cashews, but much of it is slippery and impossible to untangle. Yet a few simple steps could have a disproportionate impact.

Learn via practice

The ideal way to train an expert is through apprenticeship: one student working closely with one teacher or practitioner. However, that model cannot be provided at scale at this time.

But the National Education Policy’s four-year undergraduate structure already provides for a research pathway in the final year, which is the closest institutional equivalent available.

In practice, residual coursework often crowds out the immersion the policy intends. Universities should allow any remaining essential coursework to be completed online and free students to spend the year embedded in industry, working with university laboratories or national laboratories. There they could work alongside people solving real problems, encounter uncertainty, and learn how to acquire knowledge as it becomes necessary.

A future we cannot predict cannot be prepared for by adding ever more material to the curriculum. We should instead give undergraduates the time and freedom to practise entering the unknown.

K. VijayRaghavan chairs the Science Advisory Council at Ashoka University and is DAE–Homi Bhabha Chair at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR. Shivaji Sondhi is Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford.

Published - August 19, 2026 12:44 am IST