Opinion: Addressing AI Anxiety - A Lesson from Zerodha's Playbook

Over the past weeks, I've been talking to different people from diverse corners of the IT industry in Bengaluru. The narrative is evolving. An eerie undertone is emerging from these conversations, painting a disconcerting picture of how AI and automation are disrupting lives in very personal ways.

In a cafe on a rainy afternoon, I found myself across the table from an employee of a large IT services company. He had been a software tester for a decade, his experienced eyes the gatekeepers between software flaws and smooth user experiences. But then the email came. His role, he was told, was being made redundant by automation technologies.

"There was no warning, no transition. Just an abrupt goodbye to a decade's worth of effort and expertise," the IT services engineer said, his fingers absent-mindedly stirring an untouched coffee. In his story, the human dimension to AI's ascent was not one of efficiency or triumph.

It was a story of displacement and anxiety.