told Business Insider that, contrary to popular belief, he thinks AI will create more jobs for recent graduates or "freshers," rather than reduce them."My argument is you probably need more freshers than less, because as you have more freshers, the expertise levels needed go down," he explained.

Kumar backed this up with several arguments. He said that AI will lower the entry barrier for newcomers. It will thus help narrow the expertise gap and raise productivity across levels.

He claimed that at Cognizant, junior developers, those in the bottom 50%, improved their productivity by 37%, way more than the 17% among the more experienced group. “Tech disruptions so far put information on your fingertips. This is a technology which is going to put expertise on your fingertips,” he said.

The IT major’s CEO added that the nature of engineering roles will change as AI tools become more common. Rather than coding, developers will start creating software that directs AI agents.

"So this whole paradigm opens up more embrace [SIC] of software, because you're doing more for less, and when you do more for less, the adoption of software is going to go up," he added.

As AI reduces the cost of completing tasks, Kumar believes businesses will use those gains to get even more work done, not to cut jobs. Demand may shift, but it doesn’t necessarily mean fewer workers overall, he saidHis views contrast with those of other tech leaders such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Last month, Amodei warned that AI could replace half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, as ET had reported. He had also criticised governments and other AI companies for "sugar-coating" the coming reality.

On the other hand, Google CEO Sundar Pichai echoed a sentiment similar to Kumar’s when it comes to the role of coders. He said AI is helping free people to do more meaningful work. Pichai emphasised that because of AI, the “opportunity space” to do more is expanding as well.