For years, one of the biggest fears surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has been simple: if machines can do more of the work, what will people be left to do?
A recent move by Cognizant offers a different way of looking at the question.
The technology services company says it plans to hire 1,500 US college graduates and expand two new roles, called Frontier Certified Engineers and Frontier Business Operators, to a combined 15,000 people.
These are jobs that are emerging specifically because companies are trying to put AI to work.
The example is important because it shows that AI does not only replace existing tasks. It can also create demand for people who know how to build, manage, check and apply AI systems.
As businesses adopt these tools, they need employees who understand both the technology and the business problems it is supposed to solve.
Cognizant says one of its teams recently redesigned an account-management process for a food-service company using 17 AI agents, saving account managers around 11 hours a week.
That does not necessarily mean the account managers became unnecessary. Instead, some of their routine work was taken over by AI, potentially leaving more time for work that requires judgement, communication and decision-making.
But there is another side to the story. A company announcing thousands of new AI-related positions does not prove that AI will create enough jobs to replace every job it disrupts.
Some roles will almost certainly shrink or disappear, particularly where work consists largely of repetitive and predictable tasks. And not everyone whose job changes will automatically have the skills needed for the new positions.
That is why the more useful question for graduates may not be whether AI will take jobs or create jobs. It is how quickly the nature of work will change, and whether education and training can keep up.
Cognizant says it has already trained more than one million people through its global skilling programme and now aims to reach two million by 2030.
For graduates entering the workforce, the lesson is neither to fear AI nor to assume it will solve the jobs problem. The safer bet is to understand how AI works, learn how to use it, and develop the human skills that remain difficult to automate.
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