Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy expressed his views on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the landscape of IT services acknowledging the potential dangers, particularly in scenarios involving malevolent intentions, such as utilizing AI for warfare or creating deepfakes.
“Deepfakes is an issue or even in the context of any technology getting into an evil mind, that's always an issue,” he told Moneycontrol in an interview adding that he isn’t too negative about it.
“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,” he added.
Contrary to doomsday prophecies, Murthy firmly believes that AI won't sound the death knell for coders but asserts that its success hinges on how it's employed. He emphasizes the importance of viewing AI as an augmentative tool rather than a replacement, drawing parallels to the historical development of case tools in the 1970s.
“In some areas like automatic driving, driverless cars, all those are good. For example, using AI in controlling nuclear reactors is a wonderful thing or 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 very, very useful in precision surgery, robotics is very useful,” Murthy said listing ways in which AI can help humanity.
“What my personal feeling is, I may be wrong 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,” the 77-year-old said.
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Murthy drew parallels between AI and other powerful tools, like guns, emphasizing the need to prevent their misuse by individuals with malicious intent.
“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,” Murthy said.
Watch: Narayana Murthy speaks on AI and more with Moneycontrol
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