"Artificial intelligence will explode in the next 5-10 years"

Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Oxford University's Saïd Business School, in a conversation with Kalli Purie, Vice Chairperson of the India Today Group, talks about the impact of AI and what the future holds for this disruptive technology 

- Kalli Purie

Artificial intelligence is one of the biggest disruptions the world is grappling with right now. From businesses to jobs to social behaviour, AI’s impact can be felt everywhere. At the Business Today India@100 Summit held recently, India Today Group Vice Chairperson Kalli Purie caught up with AI expert Soumitra Dutta, who has a PhD in the technology and has been tracking it for three decades, to discuss a range of issues that this disruption gives rise to. In a session called ‘Managing with AI’, Dutta, the Peter Moores Dean and Professor of Management at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, spoke extensively about how AI will affect jobs and skill sets, the need for regulations, and the concept of responsible AI. Edited excerpts:

Q: You’ve talked about the Moore’s Law of computer processing power and how it doubles every 18 months and that there’s a tipping point for technology. You have a very good visual related to Lake Michigan to explain this. Please explain what that means and where you think we are right now.

A: We all know that we are living in exponential times, and often that is substantiated by saying that technology is increasing exponentially, both in terms of computing power, and in terms of data and other similar aspects... But what exactly does it mean in terms of trends over time? So this is a small visual… [that] shows the filling up of a lake in the US, Lake Michigan, whose volume is roughly the capacity of