Professor Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, talked about the future and potential of Artificial Intelligence, the impact AI will have on the job market, Web 3.0, fair use of IP in the world of generative AI and much more during a riveting conversation with Kalli Purie, Vice Chairperson, India Today Group, at Business Today India@100 Summit 2023
During the session 'Managing With AI', India Today Group Vice Chairperson Kalli Purie raised the pertinent question on whether AI will cause job losses. Professor Soumitra Dutta said, “It will certainly make transitions in jobs more acute and frequent… But AI is a long journey and today it is just the next phase in the digital journey.” He talked about how applying AI can provide all the benefits of cost, quality and time
Oxford professor Soumitra Dutta went on to explain how AI can make things better, cheaper and faster. He talked about how earlier in banking if you wanted to get your wealth managed professionally, you would have to have a certain level of wealth to afford the time of a banker or financial professional. He added, "Today all of that is handled by automated algorithms, AI-based systems and you can do it much more cheaply for people with even smaller volumes of wealth."
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Professor Soumitra Dutta deliberated on how sometimes when people want to move to a different segment that has vacancies, they will face huge social transition issues. He said, “These are the issues that private sector will grapple with and at the same time the government has to step in and provide regulatory guidance, support for transition of skills. The skill transition is a major issue ahead of us."
India Today Group Vice Chairperson Kalli Purie highlighted how big AI and tech companies claim that AI will ease lives, help boost GDP, and allow for humans to live off a universal basic income (UBI). Responding to this, professor Soumitra Dutta said, “There is a huge backlash against tech right now and tech companies are trying to calm people down, saying ‘nothing is going to change, AI will just make things easier and better for you’, that’s disingenuous. It will make things easier but at the same time, it will change things quite dramatically in some sectors.”
Talking about the need for guardrails for AI, Professor Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, said, “Regulation is very important because we have to help technology use the technology in a responsible manner. Any technology can have positive and negative things. We as a society need to be oriented towards the positive side and be more careful of the negative side."
“My biggest concern with AI is that the world is getting split into two halves: American and Chinese. These two halves don’t talk, and their ability to talk is decreasing year by year. Chances of having a global system is decreasing because of this. If two major powerhouses of the world do not want to talk to each other or don’t want to agree to common norms or principles, it is a cause for concern,” said Professor Soumitra Dutta while expressing concern having no global AI regulation system
Professor Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Saïd Business School, gave an example about generative AI learning from an artist’s style of painting to create a similar style of painting and whether that is fair use of IP. He said, “Today, the challenge is that we don’t have rules and regulations to govern this very well, it’s all very fluid and different across geographies. What we also have is that the technology will evolve to a point at which, on one hand it will make it very easy to manipulate these things and on the other hand, hopefully it will give us tools to control it better from our individual point of view. Today, we are largely in a Web 2.0 world.”
Professor Soumitra Dutta went on to talk about the emerging tech Web 3.0. "The hope is that when the technology stack for Web 3.0 is done and rolls out, and more widely available, individual citizens will have more control over our own data, control over who actually accesses it, and what permissions we give to it. Till we don't have Web 3.0 commercially, widely available, could be 5-10 years from now, in the meantime we are at the mercy of tech companies and govt regulations around it,” Professor Soumitra Dutta told India Today Group Vice Chairperson Kalli Purie