Abundant intelligence, skilling to shape AI future: Microsoft India head

Unmetered intelligence, human-supervised 'digital colleagues' and continuous skilling as the key safeguard amid big shifts will shape an AI-rewired future, Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India and South Asia has said outlining his top predictions.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during his visit to India earlier this month had announced plans to invest $ 17.5 billion here to help build infrastructure and sovereign capabilities for the country's AI-first future - the bold commitment marking the tech giant's largest investment ever in Asia.

Chandok said AI has moved beyond hype, delivering real impact today.

"...the next phase will be defined by how responsibly, inclusively, and thoughtfully we scale it," Chandok told PTI.

His headline predictions for the rearranging world and frontier AI include intelligence moving from being scarce to abundant, with compute increasingly translating directly into cognition for organisations, in an era of "unmetered intelligence".

AI 'agents' will work alongside people, taking on tasks and reasoning across data, but humans will remain firmly in control, he asserts.

Outcomes will be key to reshaping business model, and value creation will shift from effort and delay, to measurable outcomes.

India's digital public infrastructure enables mass AI adoption, turning national scale into a global advantage, Chandok notes.

Roles will break into tasks, careers will become more dynamic, the Microsoft India honcho said describing skilling as the primary safeguard in the AI era.

"When I reflect on the technology story of 2025, what stands out is how decisively India moved from experimenting with AI to putting it to work across core sectors of the economy. Across aviation, healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing, organisations began redesigning how they operate-whether it is Air India reimagining customer engagement, Apollo Hospitals supporting clinicians, ICICI Lombard reshaping core processes, or Asian Paints bending the curve on innovation," he said.

This momentum will set the context for what comes next.

"What makes this moment especially powerful is the India opportunity. When digital public infrastructure meets AI, adoption can happen at population scale - from classrooms to boardrooms and from farms to factories. This belief underpins Microsoft's commitment to invest $ 17.5 billion in India, to build the cloud and AI infrastructure, skills, and trust needed to turn momentum into long-term impact," Chandok said.

Jobs themselves are changing, he said, adding work is becoming more fluid, and the most durable advantage is the ability to keep learning.

"Skilling is the most essential form of resilience in the AI era, which is why Microsoft has doubled its commitment to equip 20 million people in India by 2030 with the skills needed to participate in and shape this transformation," he said.