Early days for generative AI, tipping point only after ethics taken into consideration: Nasscom’s Debjani Ghosh

Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh

Generative AI — and ChatGPT in particular — may be the new buzzword in the tech industry, but Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh says it’s still early days for it.

“There are tremendous possibilities, but until the ethical framework around generative AI becomes real — we will see the tipping point only after ethics is taken into consideration and this is where we have to really come together as an industry and this is a key priority for Nasscom,” she told Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum.

She said that the aim now is to bring together industry, academia, and government to figure out what the framework for trustworthy tech is, which isn't limited to AI, something Ghosh says is important across all emerging technologies.

“When you're thinking about building trustworthy tech, it is not just one point of touch where you have to do something different. It's from design to development to sales to service, the entire process has to get addressed. You have to remove the unconditional biases that exist. As long as you have humans, you will have biases. What do you do to build those checkpoints which will raise the red flag when one of our biases gets into play? There's a lot of thinking going around into how to build these checkpoints,” Ghosh said.

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She also spoke about the highlights of the Strategic Review report, stating that while 2021 broke all records due to the pandemic aberration year, there were concerns about how 2022 would shape up due to geopolitical dynamics.

“I think the biggest takeaway was that resilience pays, and this industry, the tech industry in India has continued to build on resilience, above all. I think that has resulted in continued growth. The highlight is it has been a year of good growth, it has been a good year of transformation, with the service industry shifting from being seen as service providers to becoming digital transformation partners,” she said.

“It is a year where we've strengthened focus on talent, we've strengthened focus on governance, the basic fundamentals. We've emerged as a net employer. So we've added 2,90,000 people to the industry. I think that's a huge takeaway because it shows that if you are resilient, no matter what happens, you can continue to adapt and continue to grow,” she added.

The Nasscom report found that revenue in the 2023 fiscal year from the tech industry will top $245 billion, and that the industry grew 11.4 percent in constant currency terms. While the report talked about headwinds such as delayed decision-making, employability gap, demand contraction, etc., it also highlighted a robust deal pipeline, an increase in the client base of companies, and an increase in enterprise tech spends as tailwinds.

According to the report, 2.9 lakh jobs were created during the year, at a time when net addition numbers have dropped significantly each quarter this fiscal by IT service providers. While there are concerns on the supply side, Ghosh said that the industry will continue to need good people given how fast technology is changing and in order to build “digital mastery”.

“Being a people-based industry, the need for good people will continue to grow, especially in this kind of an environment where every day there's a new technology that is emerging,” she said.

She added that the education ecosystem must keep up with these needs, and ensure that while training students they must also inculcate in students the ability to learn and unlearn, which she said does not happen in India.

“Our advice to the education ecosystem is focus on foundation, focus on professional, build learnability as a core skill requirement, and we will focus on the deep skills in industry, but it has to be a partnership,” she said.