I asked my AI ChatBot if it understands beauty, “No”, it said.
“I lack “Qualia”, it went on to add. “Qualia is the subjective, conscious experience of things. I can process the data of a sunset (red pixels, 3000K color temperature), but I cannot understand the feeling of awe.”
It concluded with a stark admission, “I am a Synthesizer, not a Creator. I can rearrange all the knowledge in the world to fit a pattern you ask for, but I cannot add a single drop of new “soul” or “insight” to it.”
How ironic! The tool contradicted the founder of generative AI, Sam Altman, who once claimed –
“Generative AI is not just automation; it is creativity unleashed. We are at the dawn of an era where machines will create, not just compute.”
The machine knows better. It lacks a heart, empathy, or emotional intelligence. It relies on Affective Computing to simulate emotions based on data.
Yet, as we close 2025, the irony is that the global economy doesn’t care about “Qualia.”
Despite lacking these basic human characteristics and cognitive abilities, artificial intelligence has taken over the world by storm. That’s because the global economy and large corporations value results, not the internal state or emotions.
That’s why, even as 2022-24 saw the infancy of generative AI, 2025 witnessed it maturing to the central operating system of the global economy.
The Rise of Agentic AI
In 2025, we moved beyond chatbots. We shifted focus from machines that could write poetry, paint art, and mimic human creativity, where success was measured by how ‘human’ the bot sounded, to a stark realisation. The global markets learned that the economy does not run on poetry; it runs on reliability.
The dominant narrative this year was Agentic AI – systems capable of planning, reasoning, and executing complex workflows without human intervention. Tech czars not just want users to prompt models to write emails but also to assign agents to manage supply chains, debug codes, and execute financial trades.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had wisely stated at the AI Summit in Paris in February this year, “AI is writing the code for humanity in this century…We are at the dawn of the AI age that will shape the course of humanity.”
Unprecedented investments are only expected to surge, but is there a bubble waiting to burst?
To enhance competitive advantage, approximately 50% of the nearly $405 billion in total private funding for the year has gone to AI companies across the world. OpenAI and Anthropic alone are receiving approximately $70 billion, according to a report from Barrons. Since the start of 2024, total funding for AI startups has reached roughly $316 billion.
Google has allocated $70 billion for AI infrastructure; Microsoft devoted $35 billion in its latest quarter, Meta increased its spending to a minimum of $70 billion, and Amazon continues deploying billions of dollars.
These massive commitments reflect what industry analysts term the “circular economy of AI,” where Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI are investing in each other’s capabilities, creating a trillion-dollar interconnected investment loop.
However, this intensive funding has sparked warnings about potential AI bubble formation. Bank of England has cautioned that if AI fails to meet expectations, systemic risks could escalate, considering there is a blind dependency on unproven business models.
The dot.com bubble bust veterans feel that information from users should determine the scope and pace of expansion. “The internet ultimately was gamechanging, but what caused the bubble to grow and then burst was that there was too much investment too fast. People weren’t adopting the tech quickly enough,” Bloomberg Intelligence equity strategist Gillian Wolff said.
“We could possibly see bubbles moving forward — one is a crypto bubble, second an AI bubble, and the third would be a debt bubble,” World Economic Forum President Børge Brende has warned.
AI – The “Thermometer” of the Global Economy
The man at the epicentre of AI revolution acknowledged the significance of his innovation, such that investors and the market view Nvidia’s quarterly performance as a sort of “thermometer” for the global economy.
“If we delivered a bad quarter … the whole world would’ve fallen apart … we’re basically holding the planet together — and it’s not untrue,” Jensen Huang told investors after the company posted strong earnings in the second quarter.
PwC expects AI adoption could boost global GDP by up to 15 percentage points by 2035 — equivalent to an extra ~1 percentage point per year on growth. Whereas McKinsey projects AI could add $2.6 trillion–$4.4 trillion annually to the global economy by boosting productivity, consumption, and new products/services.
Nvidia’s forecast and results have been seen as capable of calming fears about an AI bubble, partly because they indicate continued growth at a time when broader markets are watching tech spending carefully.
Next phase will be to set up gigantic AI infrastructure capabilities. AI infrastructure is spending of $3 trillion–$4 trillion by the end of the decade.
But companies are undeterred, not just companies, even countries and consumers are excited about AI and its capabilities
In India, total AI-related investment commitments reached approximately $20 billion, driven by a sovereign AI push and heavy spending on data centres.
India has emerged as a significant growth opportunity, with $2 billion in AI-focused venture alliance funding and Nvidia joining as a founding member to mentor deep tech startups.
Government schemes, including GENESIS (up to $11,300 grants), iCreate (up to $56,300 lakh funding), and SIDBI venture fund mechanisms are supporting AI startups in sectors including IoT, machine learning, robotics, and deep tech.
Why the AI Investment – what’s the big deal?
Huang has emphasised that the world is now waiting for Blackwell, Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip platform that will be capable of delivering a generational leap in performance and that demand for it is “extraordinary.” He has described Blackwell as central to the current AI compute race and highlighted that production was ramping at full speed.
IT infrastructure & hosting was the largest AI investment sector in 2025 with approximately $56 billion in funding, driven by cloud platforms and datacentre expansion. Enterprise generative AI startups raised billions, with areas such as AI analytics, automation tools, and knowledge management capturing strong interest.
The aim is to build sophisticated reasoning models that approach human-level or superhuman problem-solving capabilities. Second-level innovation will demonstrate automation without constant human oversight as it will continuously learn from outcomes and feedback.
AI – India’s Uber Moment
For India, this pivot to Agentic AI is particularly seismic. The Indian IT services sector, long built on the value of human labour, is facing its ‘Uber moment.’ Growth is no longer linked to head count surge. Data from NASSCOM’s Strategic Review 2025 confirms even as hiring for traditional roles remained flat, the demand for “AI Configurators” and “Agent Architects” surged by 65%.
HR pundits like Phil Fersht, CEO of HfS Research say the standard metric of “Revenue Per Employee” may soon be sidelined for a new KPI, the Human-Agent Ratio. It will depend on how much value each human can generate by directing the machine. “Over time investors and clients will start asking not just how many people a firm has, but how intelligently those people are amplified by AI”
The AI Talent War: Jobs gained and jobs lost
The global race to adopt artificial intelligence is quietly becoming a talent war, not for jobs as we knew them, but for the humans who can work with machines.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, AI is expected to displace about 92 million jobs globally by 2030, while creating 170 million new roles, resulting in a net gain of 78 million jobs. In India alone, NITI Aayog estimates AI could generate four million jobs by 2030, largely in technology and customer experience.
But this transition is far from balanced. Forty percent of employers say they expect workforce reductions in areas where AI can automate tasks. Entry-level roles are shrinking, as AI closes traditional talent pipelines. The strain is already visible. College graduate unemployment hit 5.8 percent in US this March, the highest in over four years.
The new jobs being created are not replacements in kind but are radically different. Emerging roles such as AI Engineers, Prompt Engineers, and AI Content Creators are among the fastest-growing categories globally, according to the LinkedIn Economic Graph, 2025.
Yet companies argue AI simplifies work and boosts efficiency — from automated customer service to faster data analysis and creative assistance. For consumers, this means speed and personalization. For workers, it marks a turning point: adapt, upskill, or risk being left behind in the fastest workplace transformation in decades.
