Have to protect societies from evils of AI, yet use its goodness: Airtel's Sunil Mittal

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be among the most important drivers of the world economy and geopolitics in times to come, Bharti Group Chairman Sunil Mittal said on Monday but cautioned that the new technology will pose new challenges, including potential for misuse and hence require greater vigilance and guardrails.

Speaking at the NDTV World Summit, the telecom doyen who helms India's second-largest telco Bharti Airtel, cited a personal anecdote on how a senior finance official stationed in Dubai received a fraudulent call that seemed to mimic Mittal's voice and tone and directed a large fund transfer.

The official who was vigilant and "sensible" immediately detected the fraud. Mittal admitted that when he heard the voice recording himself he was "stunned" as "it was perfectly articulated as I would speak".

"And anyone who would not have been vigilant may have done something about it," he said and warned that in future misuse of technology will enable fraudsters to go a step ahead and use digital signatures, even faces on zoom calls to perpetrate such acts.

"We'll have to protect our societies from the evils of AI, and yet we have to use the goodness of AI, because those companies, and nations that will not adopt AI will be left behind. So this is a conundrum for every time you get a new technology into place, there are pluses and minuses. I remain very optimistic about the benefit of AI that the human race will achieve and be able to do jobs which are otherwise very difficult to perform," Mittal said.

Asked about the use cases he has found for AI in his own business and whether technology has indeed replaced jobs, Mittal asserted that routine, mundane, repetitive jobs are certainly going to be under "straight threat".

"And we are already seeing in our company, we are making huge efficiency through the adoption of AI, which means reduction of people. But equally, new jobs are coming through," he said.

Elaborating, he said AI is bringing changes in call center and workforce management.

"Just 10 years back, every time a customer had to be onboarded onto a mobile phone, there was a physical form to be filled out. There were runners on scooters and more bikes who would take those forms to a different centre. From there, they would fax it to another place...in 10 years' time it seems like a joke today.

"Similarly, you go 10 years forward, some of these repetitive jobs will disappear. But have we suffered on account of the earlier adoption of electronic medium? We have not. We've added more jobs in different spaces, different parts," he said.

Mittal said he is hopeful there will be new ideas, new thoughts with advent of AI, and it will create new businesses and new jobs.