CIOs are under pressure from every direction. Budgets remain tight, geopolitical uncertainty is forcing organizations to rethink resilience, and workforce expectations continue to evolve. At the same time, AI is accelerating a broader shift across enterprise IT – changing not only how organizations operate, but also the skills and roles they will increasingly depend on.
The question is not whether AI will reshape IT teams, but how quickly organizations can adapt to these new ways of working.
According to the World Economic Forum, while 92 million jobs may be displaced by AI, 170 million new roles are expected to emerge globally by 2030, creating a net gain of 78 million jobs worldwide.
For IT leaders, that shift creates both opportunity and urgency. The organizations moving fastest are already redesigning IT operating models, but those who aren’t risk falling behind competitors that are already investing in the skills needed for the next era of work.
Key takeaways
- AI is expected to become a net-positive job creator, then a net reducer
- Organizations are already beginning to hire for AI-focused roles that barely existed a year ago
- AI-related skills are already commanding significantly higher salaries across the labor market
- IT leaders that invest early in workforce readiness and AI upskilling will be better positioned for long-term transformation
Will AI agents replace jobs, or create new ones?
For the past two years, the conversation around AI and jobs has largely focused on displacement: what happens when machines can perform work traditionally done by humans?
With the rise of agentic AI, that conversation is becoming more nuanced as many employees are still questioning how AI will impact their role, long-term value, and the future structure of work itself. But increasingly, enterprise leaders are viewing AI less as a workforce reduction initiative and more as a workforce transformation initiative.
Speaking on a recent Soul of the CIO episode, Earl Newsome, CIO of Cummins, said he believes AI will ultimately become a net creator of jobs rather than a net reducer.
“I think it’s going to be a net job creator.”
The impact of AI on employment is unlikely to be defined solely by replacement. Instead, it is increasingly becoming a journey of workforce redesign, evolving responsibilities, and entirely new categories of work.
“To say it is not the death of the human worker, it is actually the enhancements of the human worker.”
This view is shared more broadly across the industry. Gartner predicts autonomous businesses to become a net-positive job creator by 2028–2029, driven by entirely new categories of work that AI alone cannot absorb.
What new agentic AI roles will enterprise IT need?
One of the clearest signs that AI is creating new opportunities rather than replacing existing jobs, is the emergence of entirely new roles across enterprise IT.
On the recent episode, Earl outlined several emerging agentic AI jobs he believes organizations should invest in:
Emerging role | What they'll do | Why it matters |
Digital Anthropologists | Help organizations understand how employees interact, collaborate, and build trust with AI systems. | As AI becomes embedded into workflows and decision-making, organizations will need leaders who can balance automation with human experience and adoption. |
Agentic AI Engineers | Design, orchestrate, and govern autonomous AI agents capable of executing workflows and collaborating with humans and other AI systems. | These roles will become critical as enterprises scale AI-powered operations across the business. |
AI Artists | Combine multiple AI models, tools, and capabilities to create entirely new business experiences and outcomes. | Represents the growing convergence of creativity, business strategy, and technical orchestration inside enterprise IT. |
What is evident is that these roles highlight how workforce expectations inside enterprise IT are changing to include more than traditional technical operators alone.
Why can’t business leaders ignore the agentic AI workforce shift?
For organizations that move early, the opportunity is not just operational efficiency, but the ability to build faster, more adaptable, and AI-ready businesses. If businesses act now, agentic AI could deliver an estimated $3 trillion in corporate productivity gains globally over the next decade, while also expanding access for smaller businesses and enabling entirely new layers of economic activity.
At the same time, the workforce itself is already beginning to shift around AI-enabled skills. A recent study found that job postings listing a single AI-related skill offered salaries approximately 28% higher than postings without them and for roles requiring two or more AI skills, that gap increased to 43%. Signaling that the workforce transition is already underway, and employees with AI-related skills are becoming highly valuable.
Earl states:
“AI is not coming for your job; it’s the person using AI who is.”
How can organizations prepare their workforce for agentic AI?
Organizations making the most progress with agentic AI are not waiting for transformation to happen organically. Their leadership teams are driving it directly through workforce planning, AI adoption strategies, and operating model redesign.
For many leaders, that starts with how AI transformation is framed internally.
Employees need to understand not only where AI fits into their role, but also how their role evolves alongside it. Organizations that communicate AI purely through the lens of automation risk creating fear and resistance, while those positioning AI as a tool for growth are more likely to drive adoption successfully.
As Earl puts it:
“The future of the human worker is you plus AI.”
That is why forward-looking organizations are already preparing for the next generation of enterprise work, not just by deploying AI, but by building AI-ready teams around it.
The organizations that lead in the agentic AI era won’t just adopt AI faster, but they’ll prepare their people faster too, particularly as demand grows for new agentic AI jobs.
Watch the full episode with Earl Newsome, CIO of Cummins
See how enterprise leaders are preparing their organizations for the next phase of AI-enabled work in the webinar, Agents of Change: Building the Next Digital Employee Experience.
