In India, AI will rise from bottom of the pyramid: Shekhar Kapur

In India, artificial intelligence (AI) will not emerge from the top.

- BS REPORTER

It will rise from the bottom of the pyramid, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur said, “because that is where intuition lives”.In a conversation with Veenu Sandhu on the subject of Cinema in the Age of AI at the concluding session of the two-day Business Standard Manthan summit in New Delhi, Kapur said the conversation about AI is not merely technological; it is civilisational.

“AI cannot have intuition,” said the director, whose body of work spans Masoom, Mr India, Bandit Queen and the Oscar-nominated Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. “Intuition comes out when there's need. That’s where the Indian AI will come from.” AI, he said, is nothing but change at an unprecedented pace. “And those that have intuition are going to be able to adapt to change at an unprecedented pace, not the people that are at the top of the pyramid trying to protect themselves.” Those at the bottom of the pyramid, he said, have little to protect and everything to change.

In his formulation, it is inertia that will determine who thrives in the AI era. “It’s your inertia that will allow AI to win; it won’t win on its own,” he said. “And inertia lives at the top of the pyramid.”

If the rise of AI will be driven by intuition, its impact, he believes, will be radically democratic, particularly in cinema.

“AI is the most democratic technology ever to come to us,” Kapur said. He contrasted the astronomical budgets of contemporary blockbusters with the possibilities AI opens up. “A film like Avatar cost $400 million; SS Rajamouli’s RRR cost some ₹300-odd crore? Today, with AI, a kid can make that for ₹10,000.”