‘Nobody’s safe’: Cognizant projected 90% of jobs would be disrupted by 2032—but we’re beyond it 6 years early

In 2023, Cognizant researchers made a prediction that, by their own admission, made people think they’d lost their minds: by 2032, 90% of jobs would be affected by generative AI, with roughly 10% facing transformational change. “Everyone thought we were crazy,” said Ollie O’Donoghue, the firm’s head of research, speaking at Fortune’s COO Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. But turns out, they weren’t crazy enough. Three years later, O’Donoghue and his colleague Sushant Warikoo, chief business officer of AI, presented data showing that 93% of jobs are already AI-capable — and 30% are now facing existential change. The 2032 threshold arrived in 2026. Even the plumber or electrician, those blue-collar careers recently advertised as AI-proof, aren’t found to be so in Cognizant’s analysis. “Nobody’s safe,” O’Donoghue said, speaking at Fortune’s COO Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. Plumbers, for example, will still be needed to physically repair pipes, but much of the work surrounding the job—from diagnosis to paperwork—could increasingly be reshaped by AI. “You’ll still need someone to turn the wrench, no doubt, but the actual process of plumbing and the value that’s added will change a little bit,” said O’Donoghue. “One of the things is the massive integration of AI into manual work—and as we start exploring things like physical AI, it makes things even more comp The plumber remains a useful example of why even careers considered “AI-proof” may not be immune. The physical work itself may remain human, but many surrounding tasks could increasingly be automated or AI-assisted. “However, a multimodal reasoning agent today could notice a damp patch on a wall, infer a leaking joint, draft a repair plan and even generate an invoice or parts list,” the report stated. “The plumber still fixes the pipe, but the inspection, diagnosis and supportive actions that lead up to or follow it can increasingly be assisted by AI.” Even with AI