India’s AI journey holds positive possibilities

Artificial Intelligence is rewriting the history of information technology, and the grammar of software development.  Yes, writing codes will no longer be the central role for tech professionals. While coding may end, new jobs will be created and talent transformation is huge; there will be a need for AI engineers, forward deployment engineers, and forensic analyst’s roles that didn’t exist a few years ago. Interestingly, AI is being adopted faster than any previous technological transition, from the internet to smartphones, and is poised to fundamentally reshape how businesses operate.

While the internet took over a decade to reach a billion users and smartphones in five years, AI adoption is happening in just a couple of years, enabled by the infrastructure of prior tech eras. As an emerging economy, India looks to drive consensus among global leaders on the proper and ethical use of AI, so that the technology can be harnessed for the benefit of humanity while containing harms arising out of its improper use.

India expects to see investments to the tune of USD 200 billion in the next two years across five layers of the Artificial Intelligence stack.
After the international AI summit took off, the government is expected to place an order for 20,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) with deployments taking place in the next six months under the India AI mission. The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) globally presents significant opportunities for Indian companies and will not adversely impact their businesses.

Instead of job cuts, India will witness job transformations as roles evolve with the growing adoption of AI, but we have to be ahead of the curve and we have to keep our skills up to date. India is a major IT and ITeS exporter and since more people are required to deploy AI globally India has strength to fit in this role. Many large companies spend 60 per cent to 80 per cent of their IT budget on maintenance.

AI gives the tools to modernize fast, economically, and at scale, however implementation is the hard part. Thus there’s an urgent need for talent transformation, change management, and clean-up of technical debt. Enterprises must adopt first-principle thinking to harness AI successfully. The opportunity is bigger than ever before, but the risk lies in the execution, not in the opportunity itself.

As tech moguls have said, AI is not a project, it is a journey. It is going to take a lot of time and huge investments are required for graphics processing units (GPUs) and data centres.This is where India has a lot to offer to the world such as scale, cost-effective manpower, and sustainability.