The talk between Debjani Ghosh, President NASSCOM, and Anant Maheshwari, President Microsoft India, during the Xperience AI truly reminded us of the quote by Mahatama Gandhi; “A small group of determined and like-minded people can change the course of history.”

It won’t be wrong to say that incredible people like Anant and Debjani are constantly putting efforts into changing the landscape of AI in India. Debjani shared her thoughts on how Anant was equally excited over the idea of Gamechangers. Anant said, “We are now shifting the conversation from potential to implementation which is exactly what India needs, an impact.”

As part of NASSCOM’s ‘AI for India’ mission, the AI Gamechangers awards program was conceptualized to seed the awareness and enthusiasm around this wonderful technology, thereby encouraging overall adoption through the country. The program witnessed innovative and impactful use-cases that solve an important problem, in-house or otherwise. The participants could be Enterprises, Startups, Government bodies, Academic Institutes, and NGOs. Diverse applications from different sectors were received by solution creators and adopters alike.

Debjani cheered over the fact that the initiative received a fabulous response and asked Anant about his point of view over the progress India is making in terms of the adoption of the technology.

Anant said he and his team at Microsoft are very optimistic and to which he quoted Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft,“Our’s is not an industry that respects traditions, our’s is the one that respects innovation.”

Anant shared his thoughts on what is critical to make innovative ideas succeed. First, the idea should be meaningful and available for everyone to use to derive both business and societal outcomes. The other aspect he mentioned is that the idea should be applicable and scalable. Third, it should be responsible and mindful; develop and adopt very clear principles that guide people to build, use, and apply AI systems. And finally, it should be inclusive; inclusion should not be an afterthought rather an essential to innovation. Innovation can be meaningful when we consider the diverse needs of individuals, cultures, backgrounds of people all over the world.

With great pleasure, Anant said that we have come a long way with the four points mentioned above. Anant further added that skilling plays a critical role in enabling innovation in AI. “Digital transformation during the pandemic has accelerated the demand for the tech-enabled jobs across every industry.”

Anant has been one of the most consistent voices on the need to have a framework to ensure that we build around and use AI responsibly. Talking about how far we have come and are we doing enough in terms of building responsible AI systems and dealing with foundational challenges around the technology, Anant said, “AI has immense potential however it can go wrong. It is important that we build AI systems in a way that fosters trust among people at large. The question here is not what technology can do, rather the question is what technology should do?”

Anant added, “It is important that as creators, users, and advocates of technology, we make careful choices to make technology ultimately translates into opportunities and benefits for all.”

Anant also shared 6 principles that all AI systems must follow: fairness, reliability & safety, privacy & security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.

He congratulated Debjani on the success of the Gamechangers initiative and said it was thoroughly enriching to be partnering with such an impactful initiative.

The discussion also brought forward wonderful unique AI solutions that came forward through the Gamechangers initiative and which exhibit the perceptiveness of the industry to the problems that we are facing today in making human lives better.

Debjani said that seeing the technology evolve to deal with real problems is exactly how high potential technologies like AI should be used.