The workplace of tomorrow will be a blend of human employees and digital agents powered by artificial intelligence (AI), according to Surya Gummadi, President of the Americas at Cognizant.Speaking exclusively to CNBC-TV18, Gummadi emphasised that while the exact balance between people and AI-driven agents is still evolving, “it is established that we are going to have a mix of physical employees and an agentic workforce.”
Unlike previous technology revolutions, AI and generative AI are now democratised, accessible, and can be trained and deployed at relatively low cost. Gummadi explained, “The training has not been extremely difficult. We’re working with academia, colleges, and universities to adjust the curriculum for our intake, and we’re training our workforce too.”
Cognizant has partnered with Google to train 200,000 employees in AI technologies, underscoring the scale of their reskilling efforts.Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI at Cognizant, shared insights on how the company has approached AI training internally.Reflecting on his early sessions, he admitted, “The first time I did it, it was a bit of a disaster—because I felt like we over-geeked. We started talking about how this AI works and all that, and, eyes glazed over.”Hodjat stressed the importance of simplifying AI training and overcoming the fear around new technology: “It’s really about getting over your fear, and about simplifying things. It’s you expressing your intent and letting the AI come up with ways, then you going back and forth and building on it.”While AI tools have become easier to use than many expect, Hodjat cautioned that “it’s deceptively hard, because you do need to double-check everything.”Watch the video for more(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)
