India can benefit from AI, machine learning: Chandra

Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran on Tuesday said job losses due to technological growth is a bogey created by advanced nations, and emerging economies like India can benefit from aspects such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Addressing tech industry chief executives at industry lobby Nasscom's annual event NTLF here, Chandrasekaran said India will continue to remain a "stretched society" with limitations of both infrastructure as well as lack of skilled manpower, and all the changes will have to be done assuming the constraints.

The USD 110-billion salt-to-software Tata Group gets over half of its revenues from global markets and the comments from its chairman come as there is an unease over the impact of technology on the world.

"All of this narrative of AI taking jobs, in sorry to say, comes from advanced economies," Chandrasekaran said, describing how popular culture like movies describe the advent of technology and its impact on the people.

He attributed the advanced economies' distrust of technology to aspects like ageing workforce, maturity of markets leading to lack of growth, and underlined that the same does not apply to emerging economies like India.

India will have 90 million people entering the workforce over the next decade and has to focus on taking care of such a high quantum of people, he said.

Chandrasekaran said there is a need to look at technology solution not as profit-maximising tools but as aspects that maximise the human potential by ensuring that each individual delivers a higher output.

There is a need to take people along and be inclusive on this journey, Chandrasekaran said, stressing that technologies like AI are not elitist or for the well-read people, but for the masses.

It is necessary to teach people about digital technologies as we embark on this journey where technology will touch each and every life, he said adding that it is easier to teach digital than instilling knowledge on subjects like mathematics.

"We have to remove the halo effect and aura about AI or the misconceived fact that AI is only for the elite or well read. It has to be for all sections of the society," he said.

Chandrasekaran also said India lacks markets and also needs to make them perform efficiently unlike the advanced economies, and added that this can ensure that there is an opportunity for growth.