part of the IIT Delhi community. Let's
have another huge round of applause uh
for our guest guys. Come on.
They say the best way to predict the
future is by inventing it. And today we
have two stalwarts from different
generations who have each foreseen the
future for the world by building it
themselves. Our first guest is a name
that resonates deeply within these
walls. He's not just a global icon, but
he's also our very own alumni. In the
early8s, he co-founded Sun Micros
Systemystems, a company that
fundamentally revamped the structure of
Silicon Valley at a time when computing
was closed and proprietary. He
championed open systems. His vision led
to workstations that powered the early
internet and the creation of Java.
Later, he founded Kosla Ventures. He has
consistently backed ideas that aim to
solve the society's largest problems
from clean energy to digital tech and as
the first institutional investor in open
AI. Ladies and gentlemen, let's have
another huge round of applause for Mr.
Vinod Kosla.
With him, we have arguably the most
influential person in technology right
now. Steering the development of the
most powerful AI models in history. As
the CEO of Open AI, he has kicked off
the generative AI era, changing how the
world inter interacts with the
information, creativity, and
intelligence itself. A huge round of
applause for Mr. Samman
to formally welcome our distinguished
guests and set the context for this
historic event. I would now like to call
upon the stage the director of ID Delhi,
Professor Rangan Banerjee.
Good morning.
So nice to see so many of you here.
And when it was known that Mr. Sam Alman
and Vinod Kosla are going to come here.
We quickly realized that the Dogra hall
is not going to be enough and all of you
are actually privileged. We could have
two Dogra halls here if we wanted to fit
in all those who had registered from IIT
Delhi itself. Uh we have the minor exams
going on. I don't know how many of you
have skipped the minor exams to come
here. And I was told some people have
finished the 2-hour exam in an hour and
come down here. How many of you are from
outside IIT? Please raise your hands.
Excellent. So we hope that all of you
would also come for our student tech
event
on next week.
I'd like to just take this opportunity
to say that as a higher educational
institute IIIT Delhi AI
provides an opportunity but also a
challenge and we need to figure out how
we train the future generation of people
who are going into the workforce. Uh
towards this we created a committee of
faculty members, students and staff to
look at how do we integrate responsible
AI and what is what is ethical use of AI
by faculty by students
and this is an ongoing conversation
we have again through uh we have a
dedicated school of AI. We have a MTech
program in machine intelligence and data
sciences. We have a PhD program. We've
also setting up this year. We'll be
starting the MTech program in machine
intelligence and data sciences in our
Abu Dhabi campus. We did a curriculum
review last year and in that curriculum
review we we ensured that every student
of the institute has
exposure to AI in terms of courses AI
and sustainability. This was one of the
features of the curriculum review. I'm
not going to go on about this because I
we want to hear Mr. Sam Alman and Mr.
Vinod Kosla. I just like to say that
just give you one example. Uh we la we
with the ministry of tribal affairs we
developed a tool called Adibani
which are in
four tribal languages Santali, Bhili,
Mundari and others where we are looking
at AI for the community in communities
which currently do not have access to
this kind of content.
We are looking at ways and we we are
delighted that we are entering into a
partnership with open AI. We are
looking at ways where our students and
our faculty will engage with both
companies like Open AI as well as with
sovereign AI models so that we can
co-develop and create responsible AI
which makes a difference in people's
lives.
I'd like to say that we are delighted to
have Mr. Sam Alman here. She's a person
who's been ahead of the curve in terms
of thinking on AI and generative AI.
We're also delighted to have with us one
of our own Mr. Binot Kla who has always
been ahead of the curve and as a student
here I think 1971 to 1976.
During that time he set up one of the
first computer laboratories
in the IIT system and uh so he was ahead
of the curve at that time. He was also
ahead of the curve when he in 2004 I
think he donated
to our institute for setting up the
school of IT which is named after his
parents
and
We at IIT Delhi
are now a 65 year old institution
and we are in the process of reimagining
our future. We want to be ahead of the
curve in education.
We are looking at IIT Delhi 2035.
We are looking at
changing our infrastructure. We are
going vertical and we would we are
hoping to have Mr. Kosla's support in
form of ideas as we do this
reimagination. So with these few words
I'd like to just say that like all of
you I'm looking forward to this
conversation. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I'd like to call upon the
stage Mr. Vinard Kosla and Mr. San
where should we start? Hopefully
somebody will keep us honest on time.
Sam maybe uh first I'm always excited to
see so many young people. So maybe you
can talk about your observations here.
>> Yeah. Uh
this has been a wonderful trip uh to
India for me and I have a lot more
exciting stuff today but this is the
thing I've been most looking forward to
of the entire trip. uh watching what's
happening with young people around the
world uh especially in India though
building with incredible energy with AI
uh the new startups that are going to
happen are already happening the the new
products and services that are going to
get created the just total embrace of AI
and the the excitement and the desire to
bring all of this agency and energy and
you know speed to the future is awesome.
Um I I don't know about you have a note
but I think this is the biggest shift
that has happened in the landscape of
what a young person can accomplish in my
entire life.
>> Uh it's totally amazing to see and
watching what people are doing is just
incredible.
>> India has its 100th anniversary of
independence in 2047
and I can't imagine a larger shift by
that day than anybody
would imagine. So imagine 2047 and what
India might be like by then. We haven't
prepped our question. We just wanted to
have a conversation.
>> I mean it's going to depend what all all
of these people do. Uh you all will
enter adulthood um with super
intelligence
and that's going to change things a lot.
But that is an incredible opportunity.
Uh,
I have a one-year-old kid. Uh, and he is
never going to know a world where he was
smarter than a computer ever. He was
born just at the right time to never
outrun a computer. Uh, in raw
intelligence. And, you know, for him
it'll be totally normal life. For us,
it's a big adaptation. For you all, it's
like a little strange, but you know,
you're excited about it. what people can
do with GPUs now um will be the way that
new value gets created in the world. Uh
so I don't know what that's going to
look like. Um the node doesn't know what
that's going to look like. We got a
bunch of highle guesses, but we're not
going to be the ones that build that
into uh all of these incredible new
companies that people will do with that.
Um examples that we both like are
education is clearly going to totally
change. Healthcare is clearly totally
going to change. What it means to do
work is going to totally change.
Companies may be a few people and a
giant data center and build incredible
new kinds of value. Um what it means to
do physical work will change as robots
can automate more and more
manufacturing. Certainly what it means
to discover science is going to change.
The growth rate of economic value in the
world. Uh the increase in quality of
life. A quote that someone from OpenAI
said to me recently that has really
stuck with me is we built up a lot of
instincts and institutions, policies, uh
structure to deal with a world of
scarcity. But almost none of that
applies well to a world of abundance.
And in addition to building all these
new kinds of companies uh and products
and services, society is going to have
to get reimagined for this world of
incredible abundance. You've thought
about this a lot. Yeah, I've spent a lot
of time. Let's ask some practical
questions. Do you think GDP rates on
whatever is projected by economists
today and every country has its 15 and
25 year forecasts. Do you think they
more double more than double? What
happens?
>> I think GDP is going to turn out to be a
terrible metric um because AI is so
deflationary. What we what we want to
measure and I think what GDP is meant to
approximate is sort of quality of life.
Yeah. and quality of life.
>> Technically, it's a definition of goods
and services, but it's measured in
dollars, which is money will be a whole
different thing.
>> Yeah. So, I think a proper metric of
what GDP is trying to approximate will
growth rate will more than double for
sure. Um
GDP measured in nominal dollars
that probably gets kind of squirly
actually to ask you a weird question. uh
interest rates in five more years
negative 2% or 20%.
>> Um I think by 2035 for sure we will have
a hugely deflationary economy that the
world isn't thinking about. It's
interesting because uh Google just
issued 100-year bonds and I said by 2035
you should own all those bonds because
the world will be so deflationary that
it's hard to imagine anybody pretending
and this is sort of this notion of uh
you know the world doesn't yet know
how large the change is and they're
going on as business as usual. Uh I
think uh one of your engineers wrote a
great manifesto.
Um can you talk about that a little bit?
>> Which manifesto?
>> Uh people do a few of these
>> forgetting the name. I just mentioned it
earlier in the conversation. Um the uh
essentially that the world is clueless
about what's going on and the magnitude
of the change.
>> It'll come to me in just a second. I I
think even people who work in AI, we
feel a little bit clueless about the
magnitude of the change. Codeex is an
example. Uh by the way, Codex is growing
in India faster than anywhere in the
world. Uh and mostly with young people,
but Codex is an example of where
everyone's intuitions even though we
knew this intellectually emotionally we
were all hit by it. um we have like lots
of codeax access inside of OpenAI and
what it means to be an engineer uh what
it means to be a researcher changed so
much so quickly that I that is just
going to happen again and again
throughout the economy. Uh and
if you believe which I do that the the
top level driver of the economy and of
life getting better and better every
year is scientific discovery. And then
the second most important thing is the
economic engine around that that brings
these new capabilities out into the
world. And both of those are going to
get automated at the same time. We're
going to automate scientific progress.
We're going to automate the whole
economy. And you think about what that
really would mean if these things can
happen 10 times faster, 100 times faster
than we've been able to do it on our
own.
We were not
we did not evolve to have intuitions
about that kind of a growth rate and
that kind of compounding. So I don't
know. But if you were back here as a
student, what would you do tomorrow?
>> No, I've I've thought about it a lot.
The the way I frame the minimum level of
change to imagine
15 years from now. So imagine 2040. Uh
I have to say I imagine life
the delta being the same between now and
2014 uh 20 240 as it is between today
and 1970.
So look back at technology in 1970.
That's my assumption about Delta and I
think that's too conservative a notion
because
>> I think that's too conservative.
>> Yeah. So that's the magnitude of change
and and people ask me so what should we
do I say learn how to learn really
really fast like your area of expertise
doesn't matter whether you're electrical
engineer or a mechanical engineer is
largely going to be irrelevant in fact I
scared the director a little bit saying
nothing you learn will be relevant even
in 2030
but when when the first year students
graduate
you won't have learned anything uh that
the AI doesn't know better I know Sam if
you agree with me or not
you you won't know any technical field
better uh you may understand better what
people want uh you may understand much
better how to interact with people
motivate people uh how to come up with
creative ideas how to sort of adapt
quickly
create value. Um but yeah, any any
technical skill that you learn the AI
will get better at. Uh it's still worth
learning, you know, like someone asked
me recently, do I regret learning to
program? Um because, you know, clearly
the AI is a better programmer than me.
No. The and the answer is uh not at all.
I also don't regret learning math. I
never use math as an adult. Uh learning
how to think, learning how to learn
quickly. this was all a valuable skill,
but it it was all of the meta- skills
that matter. Um, I mean, the one the one
thing that I think we could say with
confidence of a specific skill to learn
is when I was in school, learning to
program was the obvious thing. Now,
learning to use these tools is the
obvious thing. And the fluency that
people pick up with each new generation,
if you sort of are pushing as much as
possible on the edge, that that seems
very valuable. If you're a college
student, what do you think matters the
most?
What's what will matter when the
technical knowledge they have doesn't
matter? And an electrical engineer can
do a structural engineer's job quite
easily. And by the way, we building both
structural engineers, chip designers,
uh, and electrical engineers today.
That'll be used pervasive everywhere.
So, what do you think matters?
>> Well, I I know I just said this, but I I
can't emphasize enough how important I
think it is to stay on the forefront of
the tools. I expect that to be a
compounding accelerant. Uh so, building
projects
all the time, just figure out what
what's going to be possible and it's
going to rapidly increase every couple
of months from now now on that that
really matters. Um the class that I wish
my college had offered um
the the motto of Y cominator is make
something people want and it is I think
for 20 years now been like the best
motto of any investor. Um, and I wish my
school had offered a class on that
because I think that is a learnable
skill figuring that out. And that's
going to be ever more important in a
world where
in a world where you can sort of make
anything happen. Figuring out how to get
good ideas, which like anything else,
deliberate practice seems to improve.
Uh, that seems to matter a lot.
>> Yeah. So my personal view what's most
important to learn is curiosity and
agency. Can you tell me if you agree,
disagree, elaborate on that?
I totally agree. Uh I think agency is
also a learnable skill. Um the world
kind of beats it out of you. So you have
to you have to like resist and continue
to believe that you can sort of figure
anything and make anything happen. And
the more times you do it, the more
self-belief you develop. Um, many people
learn this late in their careers. It is
super valuable to learn early. Like
other things, you just have to start and
you have to keep doing it and you'll
develop confidence in it. But the the
returns on agency clearly have never
been higher. You know, we've talked for
a long time about what one person is
going to be able to do with AI. We're
finally seeing it now. um a single
person with drive and an idea and
willpower um can make incredible things
happen. And in some sense, the most
important learning of my entire career
has been that if you are right on the
idea, no matter how unpopular it is, in
fact, it's often better to be unpopular
because you have no one else you're
competing with doing it and you stick
with unwavering conviction over a long
time and you just knock down obstacle
after obstacle with no loss of
enthusiasm between each setback, uh, you
can accomplish amazing things. This was
certainly the story of OpenAI. Um, now
it obviously looks like a great thing,
but when we started it seemed totally
crazy and it was just like a bunch of us
were in a room with force of will and
sort of a attitude that we were going to
do it no matter what. And then even the
first like four or five years of opening
eye, it was sort of it seemed like a
very bad idea. Thank you for believing
in it by the way. Um, and the agency
that we had all developed earlier in our
careers, which I wish we had developed
even earlier, was critical to making it
happen.
Yeah, I I would say you heard a couple
of quotes. Uh I think uh one said
the the best way to predict the future
is to invent it. I go on to add to it.
That was Alan K who said that and I say
invent the future you want because now
more than ever that's possible. The key
is agency and it's always been available
where you can make the world you want
happen. The director said uh I was part
of four students who started the first
computer programming club at IIT Delhi
which was any programming in any IT
had never existed. We just wanted it so
we made it happen. Um I also with
professor gua here in 1970s
started the biomedical engineering
program which is the other side which is
I got curious as an electrical engineer
about electrical phenomena in the body
and convinced professor guad to start
the first biomed program anywhere in
India with the allindia institute of
medical sciences. I give that as example
of I was 16 or 17. You can make anything
happen if you want to and that's what
agency is about. And when technology and
tools make almost anything possible
agency is what matters. Curiosity for
learning and always staying at the
leading edge and agency to make the
world happen. There's never been an
opportunity to do startups. I'm very
excited by this little company we
invested in. They approached me a few
months ago. Um, Emergent launched a
product in July or August. Last week
they called me and said they'd exceeded
100 million ARR rate in 8 months, the
fastest I've seen anybody grow, even
Lovable or Replet or any of those
companies. Um, so that opportunity
exists for all of you. I don't know if
you want to do a finishing comment.
>> Uh, I can't really say anything better
than that. uh this is like a special
time like I I this is I think the best
time ever to be starting off careers uh
and yeah the opportunity is incredible.
>> Yeah, I'll finish by a last quote I have
uh most people especially in India are
especially averse to risk. There's a
Harvard Business School where the case
that starts with a quote from me saying,
"My willingness to fail allows me to
succeed." So, I really encourage all of
you to go be risktaking.
There's so much opportunity to take
advantage of it, take advantage of
tools, curiosity,
um, agency, risk takingaking, and then
persistence because the path is never
simple or or smooth. So you have to
persist through the hard times. Thank
you. I think there's we are at the end
of our talk.
>> Okay.
>> Uh what a wonderful conversation guys.
Uh we had Miss Anita Williams a month
back and the idea that learning is such
an important thing for for such huge
personas for such huge stalwarts. I
think that is one of the most humbling
things we learn here today. Uh now we'd
like to open up the floor uh for
students to ask their own questions. For
this I'd like to invite on stage Mr.
Raghav Gupta the head of education for
open AI in India. Uh he's currently
leading leading partnerships with
academic institutions ensuring that AI
is integrated responsibly across all
dimensions.
>> Good morning. It's incredible seeing a
packed hall. Um Sam, I know you have a
packed uh few days in India and there
are many senior meetings but uh to me it
seems like this is going to be the most
exciting session. Would you would you
agree? I do. And I'd love to ask the
students as well. Are you all excited
for this conversation? Uh I mean come on
now you we can do better.
Are you all excited for this
conversation with Sam?
So, so we have some of India's uh bright
young minds here and they're studying
engineering, they're studying computer
science, I think we have health
sciences, management, design and so on.
Um I think you all sent us like 800 plus
questions. Uh we can't take all 800 but
I've shortlisted the broad themes and
we'll invite you to ask them live. Um
I'll kick us off a little bit. U Sam you
wrote this um article in Times of India
earlier this week and the headline kind
of captured your message very nicely
where it said that um AI will define
India's future and um India will define
AI's future as well and I know at the AI
summit you've seen a lot of what's
happening around uh development in AI
would you like to talk a little bit
about your impressions u there
>> India is already our second largest
market there's 100 million chatbt users
a third of them are students fastest
growing codex market in the world. India
should be our largest market over time.
More than just usage of products like
Chachi PT that the building energy in
India um seems like it is growing faster
than anywhere else. The desire to really
create new kinds of products and
services, brand new companies that are
all about AI. Uh this is Yeah, it's just
amazing and so it's been great to be
here.
>> Wonderful. Um so we're going to go to
the students next and u we'll open it up
live. I I think we have Mukund who's
going to ask the first question and
Mukund is from IIT Delhi. Uh let's get
get started with Mukund then.
>> Hi Sam, I'm Mukun from the department of
mathematics IT Delhi. I'm in my final
year pursuing a integrated master's
degree. So my question is you have
talked about intelligence becoming a
cheap utility but we are seeing a
specialized high reasoning models being
gated by premium subscriptions. So how
do you reconcile the concept of broad
access uh with the economic viability of
these frontier models?
>> I think the most amazing thing well
there's many amazing things I can't say
the most. One of the amazing things
happening is the rate at which AI is
getting cheaper at a given level of
intelligence. Um, we are, if you look at
a hard reasoning problem, what it would
have cost you to solve it using an
OpenAI API um, a year and a half ago
versus now, it's down about a,000x.
A,000x in 18 months is just that doesn't
happen very often. Um, I don't think
we'll be able to sustain another
thousandx over the next 18 months, but
maybe we will, but there will be a
significant decrease in in cost. So our
goal here is to relentlessly drive the
cost of intelligence down as close to
zero as we can. Um and then make that
available to the world as a very lowcost
asset. Uh and for a bunch of reasons uh
accessibility being one of them. That's
that's a critical part of our mission.
Um there are going to be a bunch of
societal disruptions around that. Like
part of society has maybe
We talked earlier about this issue of um
abundance versus scarcity, but society
has been used to intelligence being a
relatively scarce resource. Um also the
ability to make things happen in the
physical world, energy, robotics,
whatever. If all of that changes, I
don't think society yet has a consensus
on how things are going to work and
where the the limits, the natural limits
are going to be. But I do think the cost
of intelligence is going to trend down
and down and in terms of empowering the
entire world that's very important.
>> Uh we'll go to uh Tjis next who's also
from IIT Delhi and I know the director
also spoke a little bit about uh safety
and I think Tjis your question is
related to that. So go ahead please.
>> Yeah. Hi Sam, I'm the Raj Mangala. I'm
currently a final year student here at
IT Delhi. I'm pursuing my bachelor's in
computational mechanics. Uh my question
for you is how do we keep AI safe
without blocking innovation from things
like prompt injection that are happening
recently?
I I think there's three things here. Um
one, we have to figure out how to
technically align AI. Um we have made
better progress there than I thought we
might have, but there's still things to
do as we get to these systems that are
truly much smarter than we are. How we
supervise those systems
requires new ideas. As we get to a world
where AI is writing so much source code
and doing so much research, we can't
review all of it. There's a bunch of
things that used to feel like sci-fi
that are now clear alignment challenges
that we have to that we have to address.
Um, we've been doing work here for a
while. Other labs have been doing work
here for a while. On the whole,
alignment has looked easier than I
feared, but we're clearly not done. So,
bucket one is technical safety work
around alignment. Two is there's a whole
new kind of security infrastructure that
needs to get built. You mentioned prompt
injection. I think that's a great
example. Open claw is an amazing thing.
Codeex is an amazing thing. I thought
that I was going to be a very
disciplined person and not let them run
on my computer with root access uh
because I thought that was an insane
thing to do and that lasted about two
hours and then I was like gh it's really
annoying to approve everything. It's so
convenient. I want to just I'm going to
just like let it rip. And if I'm willing
to do that a lot of other people will be
willing to do that too. I should be one
of the more conservative ones there. So
I think we need to develop a a new kind
of
security architecture different from the
model technical alignment to let people
be able to use these agents without
insane things happening. Like it is
awesome that you can run something on
your computer and it can get to know
everything about your life and record
your screen and use the web for you and
everything else. Um it will be
significantly less awesome if it starts
like randomly telling your secrets to
people it shouldn't. Um and then third
and most important
you mentioned not blocking innovation. I
super agree. Uh the the kind of like
these are caricatures because everybody
is a little bit in the middle but the
kind of the two paths the world is
looking at right now is either we accept
you know an AI company or country or
model having sort of effective
totalitarian control over the world for
no safety problems at all. You have one
AI to rule them all. has been people's
vision over time. Um the other is that
we superdemocratize access and we put
powerful AI in everyone's hands and we
trust that if you you know out of a 100
people 99 are going to be good one
person bad the good people will stop the
bad some things are going to go wrong in
that world people are for sure going to
misuse AI uh in small and probably in
big ways um but for a long time the
world I think has shown that if people
are basically most people are good and
the good people stop the bad people as
long as there's not a huge power
imbalance. We can get to a world where
we democratize AI. Everybody lifts up
and that kind of keeps the new powerful
bad forces in check. This is the story
of of
society for a long time. It will be
messy. Things will go wrong. Um but
I think empowering everyone and having a
wide distribution of power is the best
fairest and safest path forward. We call
this resilience. So instead of just
there's a alignment, there's security
and then there's this newer idea of
resilience where I think it no longer
works for open AI to just say we will
block our models from telling people how
to make a pathogen because some open
source model is going to help some bad
guy make a pathogen and we have to have
society ready to defend against that
with rapid response vaccines sort of new
ways to block respiratory transmission
whatever else. Um yeah that's what I
would say. So the next question is from
Yash and he's not here so I'll read it
out on his behalf. Um I read that uh a
lot of research behind study mode in
chat GPT happened in India last year and
so if OpenAI were to build a product
specifically for India not adapted but
designed for India first what problem
would you want to it to solve?
>> I would rather one of you figure out the
answer to that. Um, we
way more innovation is going to happen
outside of OpenAI than inside of OpenAI.
And our strategy is to build the core
model and the basic way to use it,
ChachiBT, the API agents like Codex and
the general agent and really empower
everybody else to build it. Um, one of
my learnings from OpenAI is that most
innovation in the world uh comes from
startups and we want to empower them.
Um I think we're going to shift gears a
little bit to a health related question
which is uh going to come from Aish from
as you have the microphone. Yeah, go
ahead.
>> Hello. Uh my name is Arnesh. I'm a
thirdyear medical student at as uh New
Delhi and uh my question is about uh
Chad GBD health. So uh we know that Chad
GBT health connects to Apple health and
medical records but uh in India people
uh most people have neither they have uh
mostly just a phone. So my question is
uh how would you rethink uh health AI in
a country like India?
>> I love using chat for health. I don't
have it connected to anything. I type in
lots of notes. Every time I get like a
blood test or something, I upload it. If
every time I have symptoms, I type it
in. It works really well without medical
records. Um, we'd love to connect to any
platforms that emerge in India as
important platforms, but one of a huge
volume of chat GBT is health related
queries and with no connectors at all,
we've worked to make it very good.
>> Um, I think you'll like the next
question uh which is going to come from
Vijay uh who's from IIT Delhi. Uh Vijay
you have the microphone. Uh hi Sam I'm
Vijay uh I'm a third year student at IIT
Delhi in computer science department. So
I would like to know um how would I
undergrads be able to join OpenAI
directly and what are the current and
future objectives of OpenAI's office in
India? Uh we would love for you to join
OpenAI.
Um, we would love for you to join join
OpenAI either in our office in India or
in the US. I think these next couple of
years are going to be the most exciting
years yet in the development of AI. Um,
and the coolest, well, hopefully there's
a lot of cool parts about being an open
eye, but I think the coolest part is you
get to see the future and use the tools
like six months before everybody else.
And the work that that enables in the
development process is awesome. So, we
would love to hear from you. By the way,
you can ask me like harder, more
controversial questions. I won't be
offended. Like go for it.
I like those. And I think you might have
seen uh you know, we have an office in
Delhi. We've just announced offices in
Bangalore and Mumbai as well. So the
team is growing rapidly. So would love
to engage on this conversation. Um okay,
we're going to go to Sahed next. Uh
Sahi, sorry. Um who's from Amiti
University and you have the microphone.
Hi Sam, I'm Sah. I'm from Amit
University. I'm a 30-year student
pursuing artificial intelligence in AI
in Amit University. So my question is in
today's market where 18 year olds are
competing for jobs with AI, what unfair
advantage do we humans have a lot uh
watching the very best people now work
with AI is really incredible and so
different than a year ago. But you watch
these people that have like six monitors
on their desk, three agents per monitor
like going session by session. One
person can do what a team of
um
a lot of engineers used to take to do.
And when you can keep a whole problem in
one human head and manage a bunch of
agents, you are able to bring things to
life at a speed and quality level you
just couldn't do before. Um, and there's
still, this may change something in the
future, but there's still something that
humans are so good at, that AI is so bad
at about thinking through the sort of
like highle strategy of a system or a
product or whatever. Um, that people who
are proficient at using AI have a huge
advantage uh, not just over AI, but over
other people who are not doing that. uh
in the long-term future, I don't know
exactly what the advantage will look
like will be, but um we seem so wired to
care about other people and care so
little about machines
uh that
somehow that feels like it's going to be
part of whatever the answer is.
So the next question is a little linked
to what the prime minister said
yesterday as well and you know he said
there are two kinds of people in the
world. one who think that AI is fearful,
the others who are very you know excited
about the future of what AI can bring
and I think the next question is a
little bit about jobs and you know that
comes up often of course uh which is
from uh Guru Dhanush. So go ahead Chris.
>> Hi sir, my name is Guru Danush. I am a
second year BK student in mathematics
and computing. My question is what do
you say to the workers who fear that
their jobs will be outdated in next five
years and what skills should they be
focusing on now? Anyone who says they're
only excited or only fearful about AI is
I think not being very thoughtful. I
don't think it's two camps. I think
there's a continuum of people based on
whether you're 90% excited and 10%
fearful or 90% fearful and 10% excited.
But as with any change of this magnitude
happening this quickly, um, and with
this much unknown, this much promise,
this much obvious peril, um, it's it you
you have to be somewhere on that
spectrum. You can't it can't be sort of
at at either end. Um,
a big part of that is what the impact on
jobs is going to be. And
I will caveat this with lots of other
things by AI by saying that no one
really knows including us. There will be
many surprises. Um, some jobs will
totally go away. Many jobs will not
change as much as it seems like they
should with AI because we have, you
know, we want someone else to be doing
that. we still go want a human doctor to
tell us things even if they we know the
AI gives better advice or any many other
set of examples. Uh or you know
entrepreneurs will still start companies
they'll just grow faster and they'll do
more and it'll be more disruptive to
existing jobs.
And then
most of all,
every time in history that there's been
a major technological shift, we have
underestimated
how quickly the new jobs are going to
come and how different they were going
to be. It'd be very hard to think about
my job, for example, before computers
were invented. Um, and impossible to
think about my job before, say, the
industrial revolution. Um, there are
jobs now that are
incredibly good jobs that didn't exist
as a category 20 years ago, even if
someone from 500 years ago could look at
the jobs of the world today, um,
generally speaking, they would say about
many of the jobs, um, certainly my job,
you know, death's not a real job. You're
doing fine. You could, you don't have to
be working. You're like, you've got
plenty of food. you've got access to
great shelter. Like this is this is not
a job they could have imagined and it
wouldn't look like real work. I hope
100 years from now, not even 500, we
would all look at the jobs and be like,
"Those people are impossibly rich. They
have everything they could ever want.
They are making up ways to spend their
time to entertain themselves. It's a,
you know, it's a player of game style
existence. They don't really need this."
Um, and
that is sort of the history of society
building up
more collective welfare for each other.
Uh,
and I think that's great, but we never
run out of things to do. We have never
gotten to the sort of like thing that
people have theorized for for centuries
now, which is technology is going to
progress so much that we just sit around
and do nothing. We find new things to
do. We find new ways to express our
creativity. Um, we find new ways to be
useful to each other. you find new ways
to, you know, gain status or whatever,
whatever it is. Uh
many of you will eventually do jobs that
don't exist today even really as a
concept.
It doesn't mean that the transition is
not painful. I expect for many people it
will be very painful. Um
as society gets richer quickly, I hope
we find new socioeconomic models to make
it less painful. But I'm less worried
about the long-term future. And I think
we'll find new things to do in in not
very long.
>> So we've announced a partnership with
the Tata group yesterday and you know
it's about compute, it's about data
centers and so on. Now I think the next
question relates to that a little bit.
Uh and which is from Kub from IIT Delhi.
Uh go ahead Gaussub.
>> Hi Sam, my name is Kausub. I'm a second
year PhD student here at the school of
AI IT Delhi. I wanted to ask a question
about what are the steps that open AAI
is taking towards building green AI
solutions for the world.
>> To building what solutions?
>> Green AI solutions.
>> Real
>> green green
>> green. Oh. Uh I think
the world is only a few years away from
fusion and really reliable solar wind
plus storage. And I further think that
those will become uh the cheapest source
of energy in the world.
And when that happens, the economy will
do its thing. And not just AI, but
everybody else will use new forms of
energy. Um the this is important for a
ton of reasons. Uh but one that gets
talked about less is as part of this if
we can drive massive abundance of energy
um in the same way that we can drive
abundance of intelligence I think that
will do a huge amount to elevate people
around the world. Um so obviously we
care about it environmentally uh and are
committed to do that. We really care
about it from a
sort of duty to the world to make energy
abundant and perspective. Uh we're going
to go uh change gears a little bit and
uh I was saying earlier we have uh
students from creative uh industries as
well. Um so the next question u is
around that and I think it's from
Parisha. Uh if you have the microphone
go ahead please.
>> Uh hi Sam I'm Parisha from Pearl
Academy. I'm pursuing interior and
architectural design. So my question is
uh like AI became the tool that that can
generate uh images, space and uh create
entire concept. How designer can ensure
and uh ensure their work still reflect
the human emotions, cultural identity
and originality
um rather than becoming too machine
driven.
>> Great question. Um, I used to be more
worried about this and you know I wasn't
sure totally how it was going to go when
models could sort of create anything.
Watching what's happened in practice
though and talking to creators, uh, not
everyone, but generally speaking, people
say this is the best thing ever to
happen as a tool in their creative
process if they can explore ideas and
have a machine help them
search the space and then pick at each
layer which direction they want to go.
Um,
and if we can make their creative
ideation loop faster and faster and
faster, where the time from idea to then
seen and results and then coming up with
a new idea from that gets shorter and
shorter and talking to creators, whether
they're visual artists or people making
videos or music. Um, they all care a
lot, as do I, that the human spirit and
the human direction and the human
imprint is in this, but they all think
they'll be able to create much better
stuff than ever before. Another thing
for optimism, back on this earlier point
about people really are very hardwired
to care about other people. We are
seeing a I think predictable but still
surprising to some people result which
is if you show someone an image if you
say I I'll sell you this piece of art
and an AI made it and it's beautiful but
you know an AI made it the the value
that people put on that effectively
rounds to zero.
Um, if a human made it, even with AI
tools and it's, you know, someone who
you can connect to and has a story and
put their creative energy into it and
had something they were trying to
express, uh, but AI helped them in their
creative process, it's worth a lot. But
without the person like effectively
signing their name to it and saying
like, "This is my thing." We seem to not
care. And I think that's another very
positive sign for what it's going to be
like for human creators.
>> And I know you're on a discussion with
Kavan Johar later today, so some of this
will come up a little bit more as well.
U and he's very popular movie director
as you know. So I know this is going to
be a conversation uh further up as well.
Uh I'm a little conscious we're uh maybe
coming up a little bit on time. I'll
take two more questions and then I want
to do a little bit of rapid fire at the
end as well Sam if you're open to that.
Um I think we have Paridi next. Uh
Paridi if you have the microphone. Yeah
go ahead.
>> Hi Sam I am Paridi from Amit University.
I'm currently in third year of my
artificial intelligence degree. My
question to you is that uh recently
there have been a lot of concerns
regarding the use of water in cooling
down the servers and that it's leading
to water scarcity. So what is open AI
doing to you know uh people help people
uh dismiss the these concerns.
>> So the the energy concern and the need
to move to green energy I think is very
real. uh that that's something that at
the scale AI is developing can be a
significant issue. The water concern I
think is no longer real. Uh there was a
time when data centers were you using
evaporative cooling. Um that is not
something that people are doing much
anymore. Um the there is you know
obviously some water consumption in
producing semiconductors
but if you look at AI data centers they
are not significant consumers of water.
This has been an incredibly sticky meme.
I don't totally understand why. You
know, there's people who say, "Well, I
don't use ChachiBT because each time you
ask it a question, it uses up seven
gallons of water or whatever." It's
totally not true. We've tried to explain
it's not true. It's been very sticky for
whatever reason. Um, but I think the
focus on energy does make sense.
>> All right. I I know we have a lot more
questions. Uh, but I'm I'm conscious
we're coming up on time. So, Ocean will
come to you and, uh, please go ahead and
ask your question.
>> Yeah. Hi, Sam. My name is Oshini Adaral.
I'm a PhD scholar at the transportation
research and injury prevention center
here. So my question is, what is the
biggest mistake you see young people
make right now when they apparently
prepare for AI?
Man, I'm going to answer this. I hope
this talk is not recorded. Uh
I think listening to old people is the
biggest mistake young people make.
I I think your your parents obviously
love you more than anyone. They're
extremely well-meaning. Um for advice
about how to live a happy life or how to
be a a good person, there is no one you
should listen to
more than your parents. Um but
for a predictor of what the world is
going to be like going forward, um I
think you should trust me for having
good intuition of the rate of change. Um
it
young people always figure this out the
best and the world you are all
inheriting is going to be very different
and you'll have to quickly develop your
own intuitions and trust them. Um but I
think the traditional career advice is
probably not going to work as well.
>> Wonderful. Thank you for taking all
those questions. Uh let's do a quick
rapid fire and you can choose to answer
with one word or one sentence but uh
that's what you need to uh kind of keep
to um and I have like four or five
questions. U the first one so will the
next trillion dollar AI company come
from India?
>> I hope so.
Nice.
Most overrated fear about AI
like killer robots in the streets.
Most underrated opportunity
>> zero person companies
bigger change in five years education or
healthcare
education.
>> And last one skill every IT back
healthare that's close though.
>> Okay last question. One skill every IIT
student should build this year.
>> Resilience.
>> Resilience. Wonderful.
Thank you all. Thank you.
>> Thank you so much for interacting with
our students and uh this has indeed been
a very memorable evening for all of us
and in order to ensure that you also
remember us uh once you go out of this
institute. Uh we'd like to present our
small token of gratitude. For that I'd
like to call Mr. Vinod Koslaser uh back
on stage and also the director uh to
present uh our guests.
I I want to finish given you gave me a
baseball cap. Thank you. With one
comment. I think in the next few four
years this baseball cap will read my
mind and input directly into computers.
We may succeed fail at that but we are
trying.
>> Uh
>> oh yes.
>> I'd like I'd like to request Sam now to
capture this moment with the audience
with a selfie. I'd like to call upon the
stage uh the associate dean of academic
outreach and new initiatives uh
professor Shelpi Sharma and professor
Deepak Jan for this.
>> So we're doing a selfie right with with
everybody.
>> Thank you.