he’s hiring over 20,000 graduates this year and says AI tokenmaxxing is a ‘vanity metric’
The loudest voices of artificial intelligence for months; Including those from OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic Dario Amodei—warned that entry-level white-collar jobs are headed for extinction. In recent weeks, Both backtracked on these statements.
And according to knowing CEO Ravi Kumar S.Overseeing a workforce of more than 350,000 employees, this outcry wasn’t just a prediction gone wrong; It was also fear mongering.
“There was a bit of fearmongering to read about the fact that things were going to collapse,” Kumar said. LuckCOO Summit Monday in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I think there will be more work.”
knowing not resilient to restructuring and layoffs As we strive to transform for the age of artificial intelligence. But Kumar said Fortune’s editor-in-chief Diane Brady He said the company hired 20,000 entry-level college graduates last year alone and expects that number to grow in 2026.
Some of these roles will likely fall under Cognizant’s new scope AI Builder strategyIt introduces two new positions: Frontier Certified Engineer and Frontier Business Operator. Although his company focuses on the world of technology, candidates do not need a technical background to qualify.
“This could be a history major who has the skills to identify and use agent work. It could be a biology major, known as life sciences. It could be an HR accountant who can use agent Claude terminals around them,” he said.
Kumar added that the workforce pyramid will begin to flatten because there is a need for both entry-level employees and leaders to provide direction (He said the chief operating officer is the most important role in any company). However, he said that there is a place where artificial intelligence will take control.
“AIs will be in the middle of an influx. If you want to have a lot of work on the front end, there will be a lot of work on the back end,” he said. “These will be authentication and authentication jobs, and these will be authentication jobs. Now, when you have a flat earth pyramid, the big challenge is that the middle layers are going to be leaner.”
Cognizant’s CEO says tokenmaxxing measures AI completely wrong
As companies race to demonstrate AI productivity gains, many have turned to token consumption as the primary measuring stick. Meta, Amazonand OpenAI are among those relying on token metrics as an internal measure of productivity. Kumar thinks this is the wrong approach.
“For the last two years, how you consume tokens, how many tokens you consume, has been a vanity metric,” he said. “…I think this should not be tied to the number of paid hours. I think this should not be tied to productivity.”
