Don’t subscribe to this hype about superintelligence, says former Infosys executive Vishal Sikka

While artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, the narrative around superintelligence is not only wrong but also is a disservice to the progress made in the field of AI, said Vishal Sikka, founder of AI firm Vianai Systems and former top executive at SAP and Infosys.

“I don’t subscribe to this whole nonsense about superintelligence,” Sikka told ET.

He explained that the AI tools are powerful as they synthesise human knowledge and reproduce in response to our prompts. But they hallucinate, and are often inaccurate. But generative AI tools help with productivity and efficiency.

“To go from there to superintelligence, it is actually not only wrong, but does a disservice to the progress made in the field,” he said.

The focus should be instead on building models, and applications on top of them.

This is important particularly for India, which has a rich heritage, vast amount of knowledge in multiple languages, and deep understanding of a lot of domains, Sikka said.

“We have so much data, technology, and a digital world that is unique to us, that nobody in the world has. That is our moat. One of our strengths is we have such a huge workforce of educated people that all of those things can play a big role in differentiating us,” he said.

While there are opportunities, changing the geopolitical landscape is bringing its own challenges, Sikka said. In addition, while AI is levelling the field by giving access to information, in terms of building the models, the expertise and capital is limited. This includes restrictions on hardware, such as GPUs.

“In terms of use, it (AI) is democratising, but in terms of building clearly, that expertise is extremely restricted, and that is a big problem that we need to solve,” he noted.

There is ongoing work to build compute capacity and data centres. “I think having a multi-faceted approach makes sense, where we have partnerships and work with countries and companies to bring AI resources. We have to build our own silicon, our own processors, and become indigenous at each one of these things over time,” Sikka said.

These developments also come at a time when layoffs are affecting the software workforce globally as AI-powered automation helps companies reduce headcount in several areas.

Sikka said the technology is creating a sea change in the software and services industry that employs a huge workforce. “If we don’t act on the opportunity, perhaps we will get disrupted. But the way I see it is that there is a tremendous opportunity,” he said.

According to him, we are still early in the journey. “The way I see it...there is so much innovation to be done. There is nothing that has been lost,” he said. While we might not be able to compete with compensation packages of the Western counterparts, he said we need to be creative. “We have always been a resourceful society,” he said.