AI will augment human capabilities, not replace us: Infosys founder Narayana Murthy

The transformation of the educational system in a country is a marathon. It takes a long time. It doesn't happen quickly. So it is unfair for us at Infosys Science Foundation to expect the foundation of higher education and research to produce very tall structures as quickly as 15 years. However, we do see that our objective of creating role models for our youngsters who are in the field of research is working, because I meet lots of youngsters in research in physics, mathematics, economics, biology, all of that. And they do talk to me about how they're enthused by our honouring these role models. So, it has become an approbation for these youngsters.

What else needs to be done by the government and the private sector to encourage funding science and research in India?

When India took part in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Test of the European Union, we were if I'm not wrong, 71st out of 72 countries. PISA is a test for primary and secondary education. And the then Government of India under Dr. Manmohan Singh, they stopped participating in this. However, this government has done a remarkable thing, I must congratulate them on creating the National Education Policy (NEP) committee. We have had Dr. Kasturirangan, a remarkable individual. We have had Manjul Bhargava and others. They have come out with a very good report, there's absolutely no doubt about it.

But the true test of the success of is how well we, the ordinary Indians will implement that.

It may be a good idea to send a committee of highly accomplished primary and secondary education experts to countries like Singapore, UK, France, Germany, US, Canada, etc., which have done a much better job of primary and secondary education than we have done.

Second, it may be a good idea for us to invite about 10,000 retired and highly accomplished teachers of primary and secondary education from the developed world, along with some competent retired Indian teachers to start a 'Train the teachers' college. Probably we can start about 2,500 'Train the teachers' colleges across our 28 states and about eight union territories.

Each school or college can be assigned four teachers, and these teachers can train about 100/300 primary and secondary school teachers. Therefore, we would be able to train about 250,000 primary school teachers and 250,000 secondary school teachers in a year, because this course can be a year-long course. And the beauty of this is that these highly accomplished retired teachers from India and the US or France, UK, Germany, whatever country it is, they can then help our primary school teachers, our secondary school teachers to teach our children to become critically thinking, to have an analytical mind, to have a mindset of Socratic questioning, to relate what is learnt in the classroom to the nature's mysteries and to connect what we learn in the classroom to solve the problems around us.

If you were to pay each of these retired teachers about $100,000 per year, you are looking at approximately about a billion dollars a year. And if we conducted this experiment for about 20 years, so we're looking at $20 billion.

That's not a big deal, because India has an aspiration and I'm sure it will achieve $5 trillion dollars of GDP pretty soon. And for a nation that has $5 trillion of GDP, spending a billion dollars is not a big deal.

We are also talking about at a time when we are seeing new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI). What do you make of the pace of change? While AI has been around for many decades, I think this year has sort of been a game changer in terms of the pace of innovation, disruption, new companies that we're seeing.

Artificial intelligence is all about augmenting the capacity of human mind to take on and solve problems that we could not have done earlier. So, it's a very welcome technology. But in artificial intelligence itself, whether it is ChatGPT-4 or whether it's supervised algorithmic thinking. Algorithms, whether it's unsupervised algorithms or semi-supervised, whatever it is, you need lot of data. You need to collect lot of data. Because at the end of the day, machine learning by and large is a very complex piece of pattern matching.

Therefore, our first task would be to move from an oral culture which we are by and large to a written culture, to a documentation-oriented culture, so that we can generate huge amounts of data, otherwise, what will happen is we will use all the data of the developed nations and we may come to wrong conclusions here. Because this is a different nation, this is at a different level of development. Our culture is different. Our heritage is different. Therefore, we must collect a large amount of data that is relevant to India and then only you can use all these models.

Do you think this is something that could fundamentally upend IT services as we know it, people are already writing the epitaph for coders.

No, I don't I don't think so. Because I tell you, it all depends on our ability to use AI more as an augmentative tool rather than as a replacement tool.

Earlier, the world invented a technology called case tools. Case tools were all about requirements analysis. It was all about improving productivity in the design, in requirement analysis, etc. And those tools also came with what are called program generators. And everybody said, there will be no opportunity for programmers, but you know what happened.

The most flexible instrument in the world is human mind. When we had those case tools, when we had those program generators, when we had advanced software engineering methodologies, what we did was, we said, we will tackle bigger and bigger and more complex problems. The moment you started thinking of bigger and more complex problems, these tools could not handle it.

So, my personal feeling is that as long as we use AI as a tool to aid human beings to do bigger things, to do more complex things, I think we will start solving more complex problems. And that's when the world will become a better place. So, I don't see them as dangerous to humanity. However, having said that, in certain areas, for example, if you plan to attack some other nation and if you use AI there, yes, that is an issue. If you are given a nuclear bomb or something, and if you use AI and all of that, that is a problem.

Similarly, deepfakes are an issue or even in the context of any technology getting into an evil mind, that's always an issue. But that is where there are conferences happening all over the world on how to contain the not so desirable impact or effects of AI. And I'm sure that there are a lot of brilliant people who are working on it. So, I am much more positive than negative about it.

So, it won't be the death knell so to speak for engineers?

Yeah, however, in some areas like automatic driving, driverless cars, all those are good. For example, using AI in controlling power plant is an excellent thing, right? So, there are areas where human beings can use AI to reduce the resolution time for reaction and make those systems perform better. And surgery, for example, precision surgery. AI is useful in precision surgery; robotics is very useful. Those areas will add value to the humanity

If one looks at the startup ecosystem, we've had some huge successes when it comes to consumer internet, when it comes to software as a service. But do you see the need for more deep tech success stories to come out?

Well, I think the support that the government has given, the encouragement that the government has given in terms of startup India, all those things, they have had some impact. We see a lot of entrepreneurs now coming out with ideas that we didn't see 20 years ago or even 10 years ago. The confidence of youngsters has gone up. Their aspiration has gone up. Their desire to solve what was considered difficult problems has increased.

But the society as a whole also has to become even more active in accepting that entrepreneurship is a very difficult path. It's not a path where you guarantee 100% success, nobody is and therefore, our society must encourage our youngsters to try more, to try and solve plausibly impossible problems.

And even if they didn't do that, they would be that much smarter, because they are operating at that level, at the leading edge. So therefore, our society has to become a little bit more encouraging in terms of providing youngsters support, cheering them up, as long as they're trying to solve leading edge problems.

While it is very easy to become a software engineer or become a financial analyst, but to become an entrepreneur and say, I will try out this unbelievable idea, which has a low probability. That is what we must do.

Mr. Murthy, we're just months away I think from the general elections in 2024, April-May. It's been 10 years of the Modi Government. As an industry leader, how would you assess 10 years of PM Modi and what should we look forward to? What does India need for the next five years?

My father would say, he would repeat, what the founding fathers wanted for India day after day after day. And that is, I want a country where the poorest child in the remotest village has decent access to nutrition, shelter, healthcare and education and hope that by hard work, by smart work, by discipline, that child can enhance the quality of life, not only for itself, but for its progenies too. That is what the Founding Fathers said, as early as pre-independence days when they fought for independence. So therefore, I think all of us must keep that in mind. That's the end goal. That is the holy grail, right? So, we should all look at how far are we from that.

What would your message be to the current generation? India's a cynosure of all eyes, a lot of companies are looking to increase manufacturing in India. We have over 800 million internet users, favorable demographics. How can we capitalise on all this?

We must ensure that those people who are less fortunate than us will also reach the level that we have and will also obtain the opportunity that you and I have. If we keep that in mind, every day when you get up, what is it that I can do so that most of the people who did not receive what I have received for them to become better than me or equal to me, better than me, then it's very simple.