'White-collar resentment could wreck momentum'

New Delhi: Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani warned that resentment among white-collar workers could hinder progress in AI unless the transition is managed carefully. He also stressed the need to build use cases that benefit larger sections of the population, while supporting career transitions and reskilling.

Speaking at a fireside chat with Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, he said, "Resentment of blue-collar workers led to the train wreck of globalisation, and resentment of white-collar workers would lead to the train wreck of AI."

Discussing AI adoption and its negative effects, such as the rise of deepfakes and higher utility costs, he urged efforts to build and showcase meaningful use cases that improve ordinary lives - including raising farmers' incomes, improving education and healthcare outcomes, and expanding language access. "In AI, there is a race to the top and a race to the bottom; the latter is faster. We need to make sure AI diffusion is useful for humanity and accelerate efforts for diffusion, otherwise the consequences are difficult to manage," he said.

Nilekani argued that India should become the use-case capital for AI diffusion.

He added that achieving this would require policymaking, trust-building and negotiation. "Technology is just one piece of the puzzle. It is about institutions, trust-building, negotiations, and guardrails," he said.