The opportunities of generative AI outweigh challenges for India

livemint.com:

When ChatGPT burst on the scene in November 2022, with 100 million users in the first two months, Generative AI went from niche to mainstream. That said, there is still a good deal of confusion about what generative AI is, what it does, and what it all means. In addition, the technology is evolving rapidly.

To start with the basics, gen AI refers to computer models that use artificial neural networks to mine data sets and generate content, including text (ChatGPT), images (Dall-E, Stable Diffusion), and audio (Aipa, Deepgram, Assembly AI). Gen AI has been used to automate tasks, such as simple customer-service conversations; to accelerate work, such as document summarization; and to augment human capabilities, such as software coding. From banking and pharma to retail, fashion and (of course) tech, interest and investment in it are growing fast.

And its potential is enormous: McKinsey has estimated that gen AI could add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy in the form of increased productivity. What does this mean for India? Given our already strong position as a technology services provider, excelling at gen AI could open a new frontier in innovation and entrepreneurship. Overall, we believe that it could add more than $100 billion to the value of the Indian economy.

Given the breadth of gen AI’s possible applications, businesses that want to get started should establish cross-functional groups to coordinate their approach. These teams would be responsible for training, technology development, and establishing new partnerships if necessary. Most important, they need to balance the risks of gen AI with the value to be created.