Haven't reached the point where AI can be allowed to run amok: Salesforce India CEO Arundhati Bhattacharya

Assuaging concerns over artificial intelligence (AI) and Generative AI, Arundhati Bhattacharya - Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Salesforce, India - on Friday said that they have specific problems that can be solved. Calling it a major step forward, Bhattacharya also said that Generative AI has democratised the input and output of data.
 
"Generative AI uses what is called the large-language model. So it can understand the language that you and I speak. It can draw the information from such language. So it democratises the input of data. Similarly, it has also democratised the output. Even those who don't know coding can ask a question, which earlier would have to be written in a computer language. This can help every one of us to write coding. But now even I can do it. So it has democratised the input and the output of data," Bhattacharya said while replying to a question from Zee Business.

Underlining the fact there are a lot of concerns related to Generative AI that still need to be addressed, Bhattacharya, one of India's best-known former bankers, said that we have not reached the point where AI can be allowed to run amok. The remark holds significance as several industry professionals have openly issued warnings about the dangers AI can pose.

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"There is a lot of research going on to ensure that it can be used for better and more involved use cases. So at this point in time,  there is always a human involved in the process. It is not something that is totally on its own. Will it be totally on its own at some point in time? Very difficult for us to say at this point.  But the idea is that we should try and do it. But AI is definitely a major step forward. And that's why we believe it is not something that you should discard simply because there are concerns," Bhattacharya, who joined the US's cloud-based service provider as its India chief executive officer in 2020, said while speaking on the sidelines of the event where Salesforce released its latest State of IT report.  

According to the report, 95 per cent of Indian IT leaders expect Generative AI to soon have a big role in their organisations. However, 82 per cent of them expressed concerns about Generative AI’s ethics.

The cloud-based software company led the study with IT leaders across 28 countries, including 300 from India, to understand how the IT sector is keeping up with the ongoing digital transformation.  

Key Insights Of Salesforce's State of IT Report 2023:

Generative AI is set to revolutionize IT: 87 per cent of IT leaders in India say the role of AI in their organizations is well-defined, a figure poised to grow as 95 per cent believe generative AI, specifically, will soon have a prominent role in their organizations. Leaders are proceeding with caution, however, with 82 per cent concerned about generative AI’s ethics.

Ongoing digital transformations are sapping IT capacity: 74 per cent of Indian IT organizations have trouble keeping up with demands from the business, as 91 per cent project increased demand over the next 18 months. In response, 95 per cent of Indian IT leaders say they’re increasingly focused on driving operational efficiencies.

Teams seek to scale app development: Only 40 per cent of Indian IT organizations can support all app development requests they receive. To scale their capacity, 83 per cent have adopted low-code or no-code tools, and 53 per cent use composability.

Teams take an “all of the above” approach to security as threats loom: 76 per cent of Indian IT leaders have trouble balancing business and security objectives, prompting them to adopt an array of defense measures. 63 per cent of Indian IT organizations use data encryption, for example, and 59 per cent use multi-factor authentication.