00:01Okay, joining me now, my first guest today is a special one, Vineet Nair, former CEO of HCL,
00:06also author of Humans First, Machines Second, joins us. Good to have you on the show, Mr. Nair.
00:12How do you react to when you hear researchers at Anthropic, for example, Jacob Coxon, who
00:17resigned in protests, going on record to say that people are building AI when they earnestly,
00:24privately believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. No other human activity,
00:28he says, poses this level of danger. Is he and others exaggerating the threat that AI poses to
00:35humankind or do they have a point? So when we were growing up, I'm sure you heard that story of
00:43share, I share, I write and the share never arrived. See, you have to, you have to see what is
00:52the lemon
00:53being sold for all these years. The lemon being sold for all these years is AI is more intelligent
00:58than human. AI is going to take over the jobs and now AI is going to kill us. So if
01:03you watch that
01:04movie called Gods Must Be Crazy, a portal falls in Africa and suddenly they treat it as God,
01:10they worship it and they call it a devil. These guys have to prevent their trillion dollar valuations,
01:16although I'm a big fan of AI, but it is running ahead of its delivery. So the hype cycle is
01:23going up
01:24because of which they are selling as a story. Number one, it is going to deliver something which
01:29it has not delivered, but it will deliver tomorrow. And now suddenly they are saying that they are
01:34ganging up and saying, hey, it's, we are going to slow down. And that is the reason we will not
01:38be
01:38able to deliver to the trillion dollar valuation. No. So I don't buy into that argument.
01:42I buy into the argument that AI is one of the most exciting technology, which is going to happen,
01:47but I don't buy into the argument of either AI is going to lead the humans or AI is going
01:52to kill
01:52the humans. So, so when you have Mr. when you have Mr. Nayar, the Anthropic CEO, Dario Amadai also
02:00backing this in a way, saying that the pace of development of AI needs to slow down. The risk is
02:08that otherwise something could go seriously wrong. Are you saying all of this is part of a hype
02:13machine that is frightening the world?
02:17I think so. See, the fact that, you know, a lot of these companies want to list and they want
02:23to
02:23list at a trillion dollar valuation. And the question I ask is, where is the use case? When internet came
02:28in, it took seven years for Amazon to came in, Facebook to come in, Google to come in. And those
02:34were mega use cases, which transformed the use of technology into revenue bearing activity.
02:39Where is that revenue bearing activity, which AI has driven? It will definitely drive. It will
02:44transform industries. It will transform education. But where is the use case right now? So in absence
02:50of those use case and the fact that you want to get listening, initially you said AI is going to
02:55be
02:55brighter than the humans. Then you said it is going to have more IQ than the humans. Then you said
03:01that
03:01it will take over all the jobs. And now you're saying it is going to kill. So basically you want
03:06to center all the arguments of AI, but the fact is, where is that use case? Right? After electricity,
03:15there was a use case. After internet, there was a use case. So it will come, but it is not
03:19coming
03:20right now. It is not coming tomorrow. So he may be right, he may be wrong, but I would say
03:24the probability
03:25of his being wrong or they all being wrong. And there's one other thing, Rajiv, there are lots
03:30of young people who are developing LLMs at half the cost at 10 times faster. And therefore,
03:36when you bring in this kind of, you know, share AI, share AI concept, that kind of innovation
03:41really dies down. So I would, I would take that with a pinch of salt.
03:47In a sense, what you're saying is interesting, Mr. Nair. You're saying this is a crisis of a
03:51business model, uh, that these are big companies that now have these huge valuations, but don't
03:57have a proper revenue model in place and therefore are creating possibly these exaggerated fears.
04:03But there will be those, uh, Mr. Nair would argue that frontier AI, uh, should be, should,
04:08does need auditing. It needs an independent safety, uh, regulator, some kind of a regulatory framework.
04:14Do you agree with that, that they cannot be allowed to operate at scale without some kind of
04:22oversight?
04:23A hundred percent. I agree with that. Any new technology, which gets developed, right,
04:27needs to pass some kind of a safety test. And therefore, whatever they have proposed that
04:31there should be a watcher. We have those watchers in financial services industry. We have those
04:35watchers in many other areas. I absolutely agree. Yes, let's do it, but not out of fear.
04:41See, you cannot create a FUD out of fear. So first you created a FUD out of hype and then
04:47you created
04:47a FUD out of the fact that it is a solution for every ills of this society and we are
04:51going
04:51to live till 150 years. And now you're going to create a FUD out of fear. That concept is
04:56different to the fact that there should be a supervision. Anything which is going to impact
05:01humanity in such a big way has to have a supervision. Internet has a supervision and financial services
05:07have a supervision. Of course, it should have some kind of supervision, but not overregulation,
05:11which is going to kill it. But it is also, but it is also, Mr. Nair, whether one likes it
05:17or not,
05:18creating a concentration of power of the kind we've never seen before, possibly in just two or three
05:22large AI companies, concentration of technological power that could be deeply unsettling and unhealthy
05:29for society. Because, you know, the fear is that AI wants to play a god and control every aspect of
05:35our
05:35lives. How do you change that? Is that at all possible? Is there an inevitability when you have such
05:40technologies disrupting the world that there will be fears? Are these fears rational or irrational?
05:48Not an irrational fear, but if you look at the capitalist society, which we have built for
05:52ourselves, right? Operating system, there are a table of two. Search, there are a table of two.
06:00MRP and ERP, there are a table of two. Pharmaceutical, there is a table of five. Financial services,
06:06there is a table of five. Unfortunately, in a capitalist society, the amount of money you can
06:12throw in towards innovation creates that kind of monopoly, duopoly, or fiveropoly. And that is
06:19inevitable in our scheme of things. But so far, we have survived them, right? Microsoft came in,
06:26and it was the exclusive operating system used across the world, and then Linux came in. So,
06:31we have survived that. And therefore, I would be less worried about the fact that there are three
06:36people or four people talking about AI. And I can tell you, because I work in artificial intelligence
06:42quite extensively, the innovation which is coming behind is at much lower cost, much faster. It will
06:50not be able to solve 100% of the problems. But the very fact that it can solve 80%
06:54or 70% of the problem
06:55at one-tenth the cost and 10 times faster is a market disruptor. So, you're absolutely right
07:01that the business model is getting disrupted. On one side, their billions and billions or trillions
07:07of dollars of investment is not finding a return on investment. Number two, all the young people who
07:12are coming from behind are able to do 70% of what they are doing. So, where will the revenue
07:17come from?
07:18And there is no business case like internet, like a search or like an Amazon, which is going to
07:24result into billions of dollars. So, therefore, create a fraud and create fear that, you know,
07:30God must be crazy and we are going to die. You know, it's interesting the way you're putting it,
07:34because if I look at the trajectory, first, these big companies capture market share, build, as you
07:40said, duopolies or monopolies, and now suddenly are expressing fears about after having captured these
07:47large amounts of market share about what AI could do to the world. Do you believe that in general,
07:52are these large AI models, the anthropics, the open AI is operating responsibly or who's going to even
08:01ensure that they act responsibility given the enormous transnational power they wield today?
08:05Who's going to check them at all? Sir Rajdeep, whatever we don't know, we fear, right?
08:13So, when internet came in and the fact that nobody was controlling internet, we had the same fear that
08:18when I put my data on internet, when I send an email from there to there, will somebody pluck it
08:23out?
08:23And therefore, there will be no confidentiality. And then the security systems and then the encryption
08:28systems came in, which prevented that from happening. So, any technology revolution comes in,
08:34we have a similar fear that the technology is going to eat us up or technology, including nuclear
08:40bombs, right? But the society found a way of controlling those technologies and keeping humans
08:46above the technology. And I think I have no fear. See, AI, I'm very excited. It has an opportunity to
08:53solve some of our poverty problems, some of our healthcare problems, some of our access problems,
08:58some of our education problems. Very excited about it. And we will, as a society, find, see,
09:03as many people are working on AI, many other people are working on controlling AI,
09:08on security systems and making sure it doesn't go out of sync. And therefore, I think society will
09:13find a way of controlling AI. And all this is hog-bossed on the fact that AI is going to
09:18take
09:18over society, take over jobs, take over intellect and kill us all. But if there was one piece of advice
09:25you would give Mr. Nayar, as someone who's seen the technological revolution from the frontiers,
09:30first-hand over the last several decades, what is that one piece of advice you would give to the new
09:36cutting-edge AI companies that are mushrooming across the world?
09:42I can't give an advice to cutting-edge AI companies because they are capitalists,
09:45they want to raise funds, and therefore, trillion-dollar valuation is important for them.
09:49So they will, in India, we say , they will keep doing that. We don't have to be the
09:56snake dancing to the tune, right? We have to use our own rationale and say, why are they saying it?
10:01What is their incentive in saying it? And what should be my case? My case should be to use the
10:06technology at $20 a month or whatever it is, and find use case to solve problems which are not solved.
10:14So corporates should look at business cases, not using subscription, but look at business cases of
10:21using the technology to transform their business. Entrepreneurs should look at the next Amazon,
10:26the next Facebook, the next Google. So all of us should not worry about the technology. All of us
10:30should worry about if the technology comes, because it is going to be available to everybody. It's not,
10:35Rajdeep, you will have the technology and I will not have the technology. Technology will be available to
10:39everybody. And that is the reason I say in my book, Humans First, Machine Second, that there are 30 ways
10:46you can prosper, leveraging the technology to transform your business and transform your
10:52children's life to do something which has not been happening before.
10:57You're saying 30 ways, 30 ways which you can prosper from AI. Give me one. Give me one where AI,
11:04far from being this force that will destroy humankind, will actually take humankind to another
11:10level. Give me one good example.
11:15Very good. So with AI, two things are going to happen. One, knowledge which you took 23 years
11:21to get in colleges, you will be able to get in 23 days. Second, the experience of 30 years,
11:26you can get it in 23 months or in 30 days. Now, imagine all our organizations are structured around
11:34experience and knowledge. I'm a general manager because I have 20 years of experience and I have
11:39this plethora of knowledge. With all the knowledge and all the experience going into AI,
11:45what does it mean to hierarchy? What does it mean to organize and structure? So therefore,
11:49all these tools are going to be available with young people. They will have the experience and they
11:53will have the knowledge on the click of a button. So what happens to the organization? Massive
11:57innovation is going to happen. Massive time is going to be unlocked and these young people with the
12:02experience and the knowledge without waiting for 30 years, certainly have that. And therefore,
12:07what are they going to do with the time? They're going to reinvent. They're going to try and make
12:11something happen. And that is what the book is about, that you can use that time to innovate,
12:16to reimagine and to do something which has not been done so far.
12:19But what's the biggest downside, Mr. Nayar? Surely there's a downside. Many concerns over jobs,
12:27there are concerns over defense security, over how AI could infiltrate surveillance systems,
12:33bust up privacy, they could pose threats to national sovereignty. What, according to you,
12:39is the biggest downside? Yeah, I think there are three downsides. First is,
12:45there is going to be a short-term pain. In jobs, we're going to have less jobs, right? Because if
12:49we are not going to be ready to create new opportunities. Number two, security threats,
12:53you're absolutely right, that with new technology coming in, the security industry always is a little
12:59behind. So therefore, you know, the defense industries, the capitalist industries, the organizations
13:05have to get ready. But the third, the biggest problem is our education system is not ready.
13:10Our education system to be able to adopt AI and transform AI from knowledge giving education to
13:18building curiosity, to building experimentation, to building problem solving. We are round-footed.
13:23And therefore, the question is, are our billion people going to be ready for the new AI world coming
13:28in? So those are the three, I would say, not downsides, but initial five-year pain, three,
13:34five-year pain, which we're going to see.
13:38Thank you very much for joining me here on the news today. Good to have you on the show.
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