MPW 2022: 'AI needs regulation of some form,' says Harvard professor Tarun Khanna

Harvard professor Tarun Khanna on Wednesday said that artificial intelligence tools would largely affect India's services sector in the short term because all the AI tools are based on systemic data, which is far easier to do in India, which is run in a more professional manner. 

“The artificial intelligence tools would largely affect the services sector in the short term because all the AI tools are based on systemic data, which is far easier to do in India, which is run in a more professional manner and scale. AI tools are based on pre-existing data sets, so in a way, you will be implementing the same data which complied with a lot of biases. We need to step up from that level,” Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School, told Rahul Kanwal, Executive Director, Business Today.

Talking about regulations for AI tools and platforms, Khanna said that countries across the world are struggling to regularise AI tools and platforms.  

"Countries across the world are struggling about regularizing AI tools. It is very clear that we need some kind of regulation for this. But it is too early to predict this now,” Khanna said at Business Today's 19th edition of 'The Most Powerful Women in Business' awards event in Mumbai. 

Khanna also said that he is 'guardedly optimistic' that the funding winter, which startups are seeing, will come to an end in next 3-4 quarters.

Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs economists said that as many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way or other with the coming of the newest wave of artificial intelligence with platforms like ChatGPT.

Generative AI systems, such as ChatGPT, can create content very similar to human output and could spark a productivity boom over the next decade, the report highlighted. 

The investment bank noted that 18 per cent of work globally could be computerised, with the effects felt more deeply in advanced economies than emerging markets.