‘Digital Co-workers’ will redefine jobs, not destroy them: Cisco’s Patel

Artificial intelligence will not render humans obsolete but will instead enhance human judgement and creativity when paired with machine-scale automation, Jeetu Patel , President and Chief Product Officer of Cisco , said in an interview with PTI.

Dismissing fears that AI could replace human contribution to society, Patel said such concerns overlook the complementary role of technology . “I don’t see a scenario where humans become extinct in terms of value to society. The magic happens when human instinct and judgement are combined with AI-scale automation ,” he said.

Patel explained that while AI systems are advancing rapidly from chatbots to autonomous agents capable of taking action they are fundamentally tools meant to augment human abilities rather than replace them . He acknowledged that automation will reshape jobs and that some roles may disappear, but stressed that new industries and opportunities will emerge .

“Every job will get refactored. While some jobs might go away, entirely new industries will be created that did not exist before because of AI,” he said, adding that humans possess an innate need to create, contribute and add value .

Recalling his mother’s hospitalisation for nearly eight weeks before her death three years ago, Patel highlighted the irreplaceable nature of human care . “There is a desire for humans to be loved, understood and cared for. You can talk to a chatbot, but humans will always yearn for human contact. No AI is taking a nurse’s job ,” he said.

According to Patel, the idea that AI could leave people with nothing meaningful to do misunderstands human nature. Reducing life to passive leisure, he argued, would challenge the very purpose of living, since creativity and contribution are deeply rooted in human behaviour .

As AI becomes embedded in workplaces as “digital co-workers” , Patel said human oversight and collaboration will remain central. AI will allow people to focus on higher-order decision-making, creativity and complex problem-solving , while machines handle scale and automation.

He also pointed to how quickly society adapts to technological change, citing self-driving cars such as Waymo in San Francisco. What initially feels like science fiction soon becomes routine as humans rapidly normalise new technology .

Patel described the present moment as the second major phase of AI , following the chatbot-driven first phase. The next stage will involve autonomous systems working alongside humans in real-world settings.

On costs, he noted that although AI remains expensive to train and operate, unit economics are improving rapidly . Token generation costs have fallen nearly 1,000 times in the past two years , and the cost per query is expected to continue declining.

Ultimately, Patel said the real debate is not whether AI will grow powerful, but whether humans will lose their relevance. He rejected that notion, asserting that empathy, creativity and judgement core human qualities cannot be replicated by machines and will keep humans central in an AI-driven future.