Mukesh Ambani: AI never can, never will replace human mind; to enable India move faster towards $5t path

Underscoring the artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in transforming India, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Monday said that AI can never and will never replace the human mind. “Rather, AI and other associated technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution will vastly expand our capacity to solve the most complex and pressing problems before India and the world,” Ambani said in his address at the RAISE 2020 virtual summit. He further asserted the significance of AI to enable India to move faster towards transforming India into a high growth economy on its path to $5 trillion.

Apart from the economic growth, Ambani said that AI will also help India towards achieving other ambitious goals set PM Modi, viz, making India’s Industry and small businesses atmanirbhar and dominating new global value chains, modernising Indian agriculture and multiplying incomes of our farmers, delivering high-quality and affordable healthcare to all Indians and lastly, delivering world-class education, skill training and talent enrichment to every Indian, including those in the remotest parts of rural India.

India now has all the crucial components in place to become a premier digital society that will “generate data at an explosive and exponential rate…Data is the raw material for AI. Intelligent data is digital capital. It is a vital national resource,” Ambani further said.

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In the past few years, Reliance has quite transformed itself beyond being a petrochemicals giant into a digital enterprise with new ventures like Jio and JioMart. The company has acquired or invested more than a dozen technology startups across segments such as edtech, chat, drones, health tech, software-as-a-service, robotics and much more. In fact, supporting startups and small businesses to expand its reach and presence have been to an extent central to Ambani’s digital plans.

“In the past, nations have competed on physical capital, financial capital, human capital and intellectual capital. But, in the coming decades… nations will increasingly compete on Digital Capital,” Ambani said. The Reliance chief envisioned the proliferation of digital enterprises when 1.3 billion Indians are digitally empowered to create faster economic growth, greater prosperity, high-quality employment opportunities, and better standards of living.