Infosys Co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani emphasized the need for "right guardrails" to balance innovation and regulation in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in India. Speaking at the BT Mindrush conference, Nilekani noted that India has been successful in striking a balance between innovation and regulation in the past and believes the same can be achieved for AI, which is expected to have a massive user base in the country. The Infosys leader's comments come as the debate around AI regulation and ethics continues to gain momentum worldwide.
“We should obviously put in the right guardrails (for AI). India has been very good at balancing innovation and regulation. Aadhaar is a good example where there was a law put in. UP was a good example where RBI laid the foundations and made it interoperable. The account aggregator system, with RBI also sponsoring it, again is a regulated way to create data empowerment. So, we have an approach in India where we know how to balance regulation and innovation and the same thing will have to be done for AI because the users in India of AI is going to be huge and we cannot stop that,” he said.
Speaking to Siddharth Zarabi, Managing Editor, Business Today TV, Nilekani described the potential impact of AI as both "scary" and "exciting." He believes AI will have a significant impact on almost every business, forcing companies to become "AI first" in their approach. As an example, he points to the potential for high levels of automation in software development, with the ability to generate code much more efficiently leading to a significant increase in productivity. Nilekani notes that the opportunities created by AI are also substantial, with companies worldwide seeking solutions to improve their businesses. Ultimately, he sees AI having a dual impact on productivity and opportunity for Infosys and its clients.
Addressing the concerns of job displacements, Nilekani said the implementation of AI will increase output, which will, in turn, drive the demand for a larger workforce to meet this increased output.
“The thesis is that you will improve the productivity of what you do today, but you will be doing much more output and therefore, you will still need a large number of people to do that. Let's say if all the companies and all the governments in the world want to AI enable all their operations, that's a 10-15 year journey which will require huge amount of capabilities,” he added.
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