'GenAI has made artificial intelligence very consumable'

‘AI to free up humans from repetitive tasks, so that they can focus on domain knowledge’

-  Dipak Mondal

THE future with AI and the future of AI are two key questions haunting everyone as we see artificial intelligence (AI) seeping into every aspect of life. In an interaction with Dipak Mondal of New Indian Express, Geeta Gurnani, chief technology officer, IBM India, says Generative AI has made AI very consumable and very easy for everybody. Here is edited excerpt:

Where is AI heading?

We feel AI is at a Netscape moment, what probably Netscape did to the Internet, that it made it very consumable and easy for everyone. I think AI has come to that point, thanks to Generative AI. AI was not new, we were using it. I have been part of the AI journey from 2015 onwards. So, I can say we are in that Netscape moment of AI where people can leverage AI to do and drive a lot more efficiencies in the way we work and operate.

I would say it has become very real for enterprises how they leverage and everybody is looking to see how we can leverage in every part of my business to largely drive the efficiency part of it. Revenue is still a second pillar. The first pillar still remains cost optimization and efficiency.

Will AI grow bigger than human intelligence?

As a philosophy, we are saying that the purpose of AI will always stay as augmenting human intelligence; it's never going to replace humans. AI will help free up humans from doing repetitive mundane tasks, so that a business user can use their business domain knowledge rather than doing some administrative tasks. It is clear that it will impact humans and digital labour, but it will free up individuals to do a more meaningful job, which is where you probably need human intelligence to come in. We do not see AI replacing humans.

Can you elaborate on data governance and its significance in the age of AI?