From India's own LLM to AI's threat to jobs and Musk, here's Nandan Nilekani unplugged

He was in conversation with Nalin Mehta, Managing Editor, Moneycontrol during a session at AIMA in New Delhi on February 21.

Infosys co-founder and chairman Nandan Nilekani discussed India’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven future, the challenges of digital transformation, whether or not to spend billions on LLMs, privacy concerns around AI and more.

Nilekani was speaking in a fireside chat with Nalin Mehta, the Managing Editor of Moneycontrol, at the 69th Foundation Day of AIMA on February 21.

Speaking about DeepSeek, the new Chinese AI startup that has made headlines worldwide after it topped app download charts, Nilekani said, “What DeepSeek has done is that they have shown that you don’t need billions of dollars to create a reasonably good large language model. That’s a big breakthrough.”

The barrier to entry of creating AI models has significantly come down, he said pointing towards the latest developments in the sector. “The government is focused on the India AI Mission and I think we will see in the next one year, some very significant models coming from India,” Nilekani stated.

Nilekani listed out three essential use cases that could have a multiplier effect on India if artificial intelligence (AI) is applied to them. He said that AI in language, education and farming can be a multiplier for India.

"If every Indian could communicate with each other effortlessly through language, if every child can learn better with AI, and if a farmer can improve his earnings, its good enough," Nilekani said.

As the United States looks to transform the federal government - with tech billionaire Elon Musk playing a pivotal role in governance, Nilekani spoke about India's need for a fresh tech intervention of its own

Nilekani said it isn’t about launching something entirely new—it’s about recognising the transformation that has already taken place.

“Over the last 15 years, we’ve achieved a lot—1.3 billion Aadhaar enrollments, 80 million daily authentications, 700 million new bank accounts, mobile connectivity, Jio’s rapid acquisition of customers, direct cash transfers worth hundreds of billions, UPI, etc. This transformation happened without being confrontational. The difference is in approach,” Nilekani said.

Speaking on AI replacing human skills, Nilekani said, no matter how advanced artificial intelligence becomes, it will never replace human skills like empathy, leadership, collaboration, and creativity.

"You can have all the AIs in the world, but if you can’t get five people to work together and collaborate, then you cannot go anywhere,” Nilekani said.

He then said that Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act provides a strong framework to govern the usage of artificial intelligence models relying on vast amount of data.

“Privacy is about personally identifiable information. As long as data is anonymised so that you cannot trace it back to a person, then you can process large amounts of data without affecting any human being,” Nilekani said.

Nilekani also praised IIT-Madras professor Mitesh Khapra and his work in AI. “Mitesh Khapra at IIT-Madras, he's building this AI4Bharat which is part of the Bhashini program. It's amazing what he's done,” Nilekani said.

AI4Bharat is a research lab at IIT-Madras that works on developing open-source datasets, tools, models, and applications for Indian languages. Khapra is an associate professor at IIT Madras in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.