Billionaire investor Ronnie Screwvala, who is the co-founder of online learning unicorn upGrad besides being a highly successful film producer, talks to us about his artificial intelligence (AI) bets. He foresees AI playing a key role in India’s online education sector in the future while also boosting the entrepreneurial ecosystem. He also warns against the trend of CEOs trying to fit in by doing short AI courses as a ‘top-up’ without deeply understanding the concept.
Excerpts: There’s so much focus on AI these days in India and it’s playing on the minds of parents, students, job seekers and the corporate head honchos. Everyone wants to pet it but no one is sure what’s in it for them. AI cannot be singled out in the development of a country.
In India there’s so much going on in the electric vehicle (EV) industry, semiconductors, renewables and in medical devices. AI is one of those happening sectors. On a macro basis for the government, it can be an incredible enabler to use AI to administer services, for data collection etc.
But what I can say is that AI will augment learning. It can generate and extract better case studies than probably Harvard. It will also play a supplementary role in formal education.
It will also make you job ready by telling you what gaps need to be filled for you to fit into the market. So, it will be different things for different people. The online learning space will have significant amount of data to work with, with the emergence of.