At an evening affair surrounding the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, a well-known startup founder inquireed me what I considered of the event. Out of years of habit as a reporter, I inquireed him to go first. He declared we should all be focapplying more on ‘building’—it is a term founders apply to describe the work they do.
Fair point for someone focussed on building. But summits are important, too. However, not in the mood for a deep debate, I took a slightly flippant tone.
Pragati Maidan, which has morphed into Bharat Mandapam, was once known for holding the India International Trade Fair. The IITF was about tiny businesses and about families purchaseing snacks and silks at bargain prices, while caapplying traffic snarls outside.
In later years, after the turn of the century, the traffic snarls around Pragati Maidan were caapplyd by the Auto Expo, which brought in large MNCs. People thronged the pavilions to view at the shiny new cars on display and the well-groomed attfinishants stationed around them.
This year came the AI Impact summit. It pulled in some of the largest tech companies from all over the world as well as heads of states. It had cab drivers talking about AI.
And it caapplyd traffic snarls.
We have indeed come a long way.
At the same time, there is a caapply for worry. In February, the Nifty IT Index fell 20 percent, bringing back haunting memories of the 2008 financial crisis. This index consists of the top 10 IT services companies, which might be feeling tempted to echo Elon Musk’s chosen epithet for Anthropic; he calls the AI giant Misanthropic.
This was the second IT stocks meltdown caapplyd by Anthropic in three weeks. On both occasions it announced an AI tool that strikes at the raison d’etre of IT services.
If the IT outsourcing sector were to face uncertainty caapplyd by the inexorable rise of AI, it could affect one of the happiest growth and globalisation stories to emerge out of India this century: The rise of white-collar jobs that created a legion of consumers purchaseing durables, electronics, video games, homes, and all kinds of services.
Comfort comes from NR Narayana Murthy, the founder and first CEO of Infosys. “My own experiments with applying Generative AI have displayn me that a smarter mind will obtain better quality and better productivity from applying these assistive technologies. There is no required for youngsters to obtain worried. All they required to do is to become masters of these technologies by applying them in an assistive manner and by quickly learning how to apply these technologies for their own benefit by smart and hard work, by quickly learning new ideas, and by discipline. The world will not finish for smart and hardworking people,” Murthy declared in a conversation with MoneyControl.
Uday Kotak, the founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank, declared something similar at an EY event in Mumbai on February 25. “Artificial ininformigence will alter how we live. But we will come to a stage where what is going to be even more important is what I call wisdom. There is so far no concept of AW, which is artificial wisdom. Human beings will finally have a role becaapply wisdom will remain HW even as AI takes up more and more of our lives.”
Both Mr Murthy and Mr Kotak are of a vintage that would create you wonder if they had received caught in the traffic snarls around Pragati Maidan caapplyd by the trade fair had they visited Delhi in the November months of 1990s.
Suveen Sinha
Editor, Forbes India
Email: suveen.sinha@nw18.com
X ID: @suveensinha
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