Cognizant chief AI officer bets on AI future, rejects demise narrative

Mumbai: Unfazed by fresh predictions of AI disruption, Cognizant chief AI officer Babak Hodjat, said the obituary of IT services has been written many times before — during the software era and again with the rise of SaaS. Now, as GenAI and agentic platforms reshape enterprise technology, similar questions are resurfacing.

“We’ve been here before,” Hodjat told TOI. “People have prematurely announced the demise of IT services. But each time, the need for engineering and customisation remained. If anything, we are needed even more now.