Responsible AI at nasscom - Industry Roundtable

Introduction

The recent fast-paced developments in generative artificial intelligence (or GenAI) have created unprecedented opportunities for industrial transformation, while raising serious ethical and legal concerns around its adoption across sectors.

The nasscom Responsible AI Hub, in collaboration with the nasscom Member Connect, hosted an industry roundtable on The Impact of Generative AI on Business on 12^th May 2023.

The roundtable took place in Gupshup's office in Mumbai - home to many of India's leading AI startups and enterprises - with industry leaders joining in to exchange perspectives on the following emergent topics of interest:

New business models and market opportunities unlocked by GenAI
Bottlenecks precluding the adoption of GenAI in business workflows
Strategies to secure the highest returns on investment in GenAI
Pathways for organisations to become GenAI-ready
Responsible development and use of GenAI technologies

A list of roundtable participants is provided in the Annexure.

Key takeaways from the roundtable discussion

New business models and market opportunities unlocked by GenAI
- Participants suggested that enterprises could potentially leverage small language models (SLMs) as a more secured, trusted, and cost-effective alternative to large language models (LLMs) to meet commercial needs.
- Participants echoed the need for enterprises to conduct thorough use case evaluations for optimal integration of GenAI in business workflows.
Responsible development and use of GenAI technologies
- Participants expressed concerns over existing regulatory uncertainties around data protection and intellectual property rights that could induce a chilling effect on GenAI adoption by organisations.
- Participants suggested the need for the industry to devise actionable frameworks and tools for the responsible development and use of GenAI solutions.
Bottlenecks precluding adoption of GenAI in business workflows
- Participants highlighted the lack of core technical capacity within the country to build foundation models from scratch and echoed the need for the government to make greater strategic investments in AI skilling and the generation of indigenous AI-ready datasets to uplift the domestic AI industry.
- Participants also indicated the need for enterprises to implement upskilling and reskilling programs to boost employee productivity with the use of GenAI, and thereby ease integration of GenAI solutions in business workflows and preserve enterprise competitiveness.
Pathways for organisations to become GenAI-ready
- Participants echoed the need for industry-government collaborations to meet the demands for upskilling and reskilling of the domestic workforce to enable enterprises and startups to effectively leverage the transformative benefits of GenAI and stay competitive in global markets, while also allaying growing apprehensions around job displacements from GenAI adoption.
- Participants also suggested the need for school curricula to foster independent and creative thinking in students from an early age as economies transition to a GenAI-enabled workforce.

ANNEXURE:

List of Participants

Abhinav Agarwal, Founder, Fluid AI
Akbar Mohammed, Head of Responsible AI, Fractal Analytics
Amit Bhasin, Executive Vice President, Digital Transformation Strategy, QualityKiosk Technologies
Amita Dokhale, Manager, Nasscom
Ankit Bose, Head of AI, Nasscom
Atul Gandre, Global Head, Emerging Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services
Bhupesh Thakkar, Senior Director, IT APAC, Foundever
Deepa D. Shah, Google AI Practice Lead, Accenture
Deekshant Saxena, Global Director of Software Engineering, HERE Technologies
Mandar Natekar, Co-founder & CEO, NeuralGarage
Mukesh Sachdev, Chief Technology & Data Officer, Edelweiss Tokyo Life Insurance
Namita Jain, Practice Lead, Nasscom Insights
Nita Khare, Global Lead, Emerging Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services

Omer Miranda, Head of Technology - Digital Center of Excellence, JSW Steel
Raj Shekhar, Lead - Responsible AI, Nasscom
Rajendra V. Jodhpurkar, Global Chief Information Officer, Infocepts
Rohit Agarwal, Co-founder, Portkey.ai
Sharad Mittal, Founder & CEO, Crimson Interactive