India Is Becoming an Architect of the Global AI Order | Ivana Bartoletti of Wipro

0:00Where India is in the AI journey, they became kind of the IT services center for the world and they have tremendous human resources. It looks to me like they were so successful at that they didn't transition to AI until fairly late in the game. India is no longer just a consumer or a talent exporter in artificial intelligence. So it's to an extent becoming an architect of the global AI order. India is an AI power. India also has that ambition. And frankly, it makes more sense to me that India sort of lead on the global south. The European Union wrote the rules. The US wrote the checks. And India's writing the code.

0:44And it's writing the code in 22 languages, right? Let's start with your introduction. and then we'll talk about what you guys are doing in India and how India is shaping up in the AI world. Ivana Bartoletti, and I'm the Vice President and Chief Privacy and the AI Governance Officer for Wipro. And also I advise the Council of Europe on artificial intelligence and human rights, particularly gender. And I've authored a couple of books, one on sort of the politics and geopolitics of AI and another one, sort of the use of AI in financial services. And I was before at Oxford University and Oxford Internet Institute as a fellow and then at Virginia Tech on privacy and cybersecurity and machine learning.

1:46So it's sort of profiled at the intersection between business academia and international institutions. And how long have you been with Wipro? Four years now. Four years. Even more than four years. Gosh, time flies, honestly. Yeah. So you were at this summit in India, the AI summit. I'd like first to hear your view of where India is in the AI. journey um and then uh then we'll we'll talk about the broader issues yeah so yeah so the ai summit was held uh three weeks ago in new denny it was an interesting summit that speaks to what you're asking also speaks to where india is at at the moment so i have been to previous summits and of course you know these are summits so it's not like uh um but uh it was interesting because it was the most open summit had been to compared to Bletchley Park or Paris Love Here.

2:58The topic went from Paris, which was action summit to impact summit. So the topic of the summit in India was the impact of AI on business, well-being, society and inclusion. and it was open in the sense that literally people could come in, register and come in. And of course there was sort of head of states and AI ministers from across the world, but it was interesting because it was open and there was sort of a lot of young people coming in to listen. And it speaks to me to where India is at at the moment because India is no longer just a consumer or a talent exporter in artificial intelligence.

3:47So it's to an extent becoming an architect of the global AI order. And I think the summit was about saying and demonstrating that. It was about saying India is an AI power. it does AI in a different way from other superpowers, the US or China to an extent, the EU. And the focus India gave at the summit was on responsible AI, on inclusion. Prime Minister Modi, not just at the summit, but previously said in a meeting with tech leaders, said there's no compromise on ethical AI. And for India, this is important because obviously when India talks inclusion, it doesn't just talk about the nice thing to do.

4:40But inclusion is also about bringing the people along in a country that historically has a wider economic divide. So it's interesting. The question is not whether India will or won't be a major AI power is sort of how India plans to define this. And I think the summit spoke to that in the sense that Prime Minister Modi was quite clear in that, you know, come to India, this is a good place to do innovation. So do in India, scale up in India and then bring it to the rest of the world. So it's a definition of a unique and different way in the global AI landscape to really come in with the uniqueness of the India landscape.

5:27So that was really interesting, I have to say. Yeah. And, you know, I was in Saudi Arabia for a conference last year, I guess. And there was a lot of talk. They're pouring money into AI, as everybody knows. But there was a lot of talk of them as being the leader of the global south. That was kind of their aspiration. But India also has that ambition. And frankly, it makes more sense to me that India sort of lead on the global south, although they don't have the financial resources that the Arab states do. Was there any discussion about that? No, it's really interesting what you say, because I have also been very involved in Saudi Arabia in the last few years.

6:24and really see the big investments in AI. And it's been an interesting, very interesting journey to watch. Of course, the very different realities. I mean, India is a country with unique strengths in the sense that it's a country with 1.4 billion people. It's a country that exports 20 % of global data, that produces 20 % of global data, where 700 million people have a mobile phone and therefore produce data and consume data. It's a country where there is a massive appetite for innovation, where 60 % of the population is young. It's a country that produces enormous amounts of talent, English-speaking talent.

7:21is a country where technical education and where there is a fierce competition to get into good education, especially on the technical side. So, I mean, these are unique points of India. In addition to that, what really strikes in India is the ability to scale up large digital public infrastructure. I mean, I am always pleased by from the other to UPI and sort of the unified payment across the country, how they've been able to do something like this and to scale it up to so many people across the country. So obviously now for India, the strategy is how do we bring AI everywhere? So not just in the tier one and tier two cities, But how do we bring into the more sort of rural areas?

8:21The questions are, yes, of course, about models, but about applications that can be really used and developed by the people in India and then serve the world. The questions are about, obviously, infrastructure. You know, AI is far more than just applications and models. It's very much about earth infrastructure. So we have also seen during the summit loads of announcements about infrastructure and cables and data centers and chips and all of that. So it's an interesting country that is mixing also the sort of the need for southern AI. Southern in the sense we want systems that speak our languages, that speak to our values and culture.

9:08and at the same time bringing in investments coming from sort of the large corporations. So it's different from what is happening in Saudi Arabia. And obviously, you know, there is a strong relationship in the sense that a lot of Indians do and work in Saudi. But they are very different sort of landscape from a technological standpoint. And it was the first thing that happened in the Global South. That is really interesting, the first one. Oh, that's great. And that can be a bit underestimated because all the other summits, they were held in sort of the UK, in France, in South Korea. But this was the first one held in the Global South.

9:49And the fact that New Delhi, it was interesting, walking or driving and across New Delhi, there was a few days, you know, there was AI written everywhere. And, of course, that was a sign that they really want to be part in that journey. And obviously, you know, its positioning is going to be very important moving forward. And the summit happened after two important deals. Happened after the deal with the US and happened after the deal with the EU, with sort of Fond du Lien going to India Gate and joining for the parade with Prime Minister Modi. So it happened at an important time in terms of India positioning globally.

10:35Yeah. From what I understood when I was there, there were a couple of things. One, they do have this data center build out program, but they are still very far behind the rest of the major AI players in the capacity of their data. data centers for scaling AI. There were some deals mentioned or announced. Can you talk about the infrastructure, how the timeline or how important that is for them to reach their goals? Yeah. So it's interesting because they have the investment to the money, the support is coming to two sides. So it's coming from the government side and it's coming from private and international side.

11:40From the government side, what we've seen over recent months has been sort of the India AI mission, which is really something big in India at the moment, which spans compute capacity, training, AI innovation, startups, data set platforms and lots of other things and financing and also working on future skills. So that is with a big investment on safe and trusted AI. I mean, there is a lot of push for, I mean, it's the first time actually that I'm seeing such a big push, for example, on privacy enhancing technologies and partnership with academia and say, you've got to invest in research in privacy enhancing tech, which, you know, spelling it out so clearly.

12:26So this is one thing. So that's from government side. And also after the summit, there have been announcements from government towards increasing the GPU infrastructure. And the numbers they're talking, I've got it written somewhere, but it reaches 40 ,000 units. That was announced by government. From private international side, we have seen a lot of announcements from Microsoft saying, massive investment, 17 billion investments in cloud, India's cloud and the infrastructure. So they describe it as the largest investment in India. And that builds on a previous big commitment that they had done, the Microsoft had done in India.

13:15And then lots of other investments coming in infrastructure from private companies. So I think in international product companies. But I think the government is very much aware that they have to scale up. And I think this was also the purpose of the summit, to attract a lot of international companies to push. Wipro, am I pronouncing that right? Correct. Can you talk, because a part of this, what happened in India is they became kind of the IT services center for the world. And they have, you know, tremendous human resources, obviously. In a way, it looks to me like they were so successful at that, that they didn't transition to AI until fairly late in the game.

14:12Can you talk about what WePro does there, what your role has been, and how you see the landscape changing? Well, you ask a very good question when you say, did the companies in India adapt fast enough? I mean, that's a really interesting point, because basically what you say is, look, you know, for many, many years, these companies, they've been the back office operations now for the rest of the world. And now with AI, I actually think that these large companies, and Whipra is one of the largest in India, 240 ,000 people working on digital transformation across sectors from finance to manufacturing to banking, healthcare.

15:03I think there was a clear understanding and quite early on, because these are international companies. I mean, WordPress got offices everywhere, very strong in the US, very strong US presence, but everywhere across the world. That AI was going rapidly, especially after generative AI made that splash and went from, yes, there are a few engineers that can work on AI to everybody can work on AI. they realized you know we all realized very quickly look you know we have to to experiment and we have to adopt and adopt a scale and fast I think companies like mine they really understood that it was as for any other company around the world because of the impact that generative AI was having and the fact that was reaching everybody they were also quite well positioned in sort of taking that balanced approach between how much do we let people experiment versus how much do we remain risk adverse and especially because when GenitvMI came out, there's a lot of horror stories, no?

16:21About things getting leaked everywhere and people putting confidential data from clients and things like that. So two elements here. The first is these companies have not just done back office operations. I mean, these are companies that have been doing deep innovation with large clients globally. So there's been more exposure than one from an external standpoint could have thought. And the second is that they were very well placed because of the huge amount of talent that they had. They were very well placed to turn the experimentation into use cases. So, for example, what we did at Wipro, and I think that we said we've got to train everybody.

17:03I mean, the first thing that we said, we're going to train everybody. So we're going to let people experiment within safe constraints, but we are going to train everybody in what is this coming up, what is generative AI, how to use it, how to use it responsibly. responsibly. And also, we, to an extent, crowdsourced the use cases because we basically said there is nobody better than our employees who knows where to innovate. And in this, Greg, the India culture really helped because this is a culture that is not adverse to technology. It's used to use technology every single day in every facet of their life.

17:46So when we said, well actually you know tell us which are the use cases where you would actually make your life easier at work we had a proliferation of use cases and this is where i think the indie advantage is you know so yes in the past companies probably were like that but actually what i've seen in whipper is when you unleash this stuff people were so hungry for innovation they're not you know of course everybody is like looking at the future and jobs and things but they are the first ones who say I can make my work better it's a cultural thing and and this is a competitive edge you know this is competitive advantage that I I see in the way that that my company operates and the way that my co-workers the way my teams the way the people the sort of um company of that size you know the way that they embrace and push and push for innovation.

18:43So, and then sometimes, you know, you've got this, you have this tension, right, between sort of how fast you go and how many constraints, gut rails you put in place. And that's, you know, and that's where you say, okay. But it's also a good thing because then you encourage them to say, okay, let's find less, you know, privacy enhancing ways or legal protection by design. So it's a good dynamic. and I think it's quite healthy. So yeah, on this, it's been quite an interesting journey so far. In the midst of this digital transformation in India, is the massive IT services, the business process operations, is that shifting in any way?

19:35Because the other thing that's happening is, you know, AI, one of the first places that's being applied is in call centers. And, you know, I've talked to a lot of these companies, oh, you know, it doesn't mean that we're going to reduce headcount in call centers. It'll make them more efficient. But I frankly question that because it seems that, you know, with AI voice and all that technology, you're going to need fewer people sitting in call centers. But, yeah, how is all of this affecting the existing industry? How is it affecting Wipro? I think there's a lot of glamour in the media, yeah, when you talk about AI, you know.

20:27And I think we've got to be realistic. I think AI is changing a lot of things, and especially when it comes to sort of efficiency gains and a lot of these things. But I also think that there are things that are very important. So, for example, client-centricity and, you know, having a custom sort of a very sort of... And I don't think that AI is going to replace that. So I think you say that it's true. I mean, you said, you know, when you talk to these companies and they say we're not going to cut costs, but we're going to augment or we're going to make. I think part of it is not really a lie.

21:10I mean, it's true in the sense that it's not like this huge change happening and that sometimes it's very useful for some people to portray. in the medium that you know is coming is replacing everything and we're going heading to disaster and you know everybody's going to be jobless and stuff like that i don't know what you think but i think this quite dramatic narrative is not really mirroring reality as it is and we see this from this we see companies that have said we're gonna we're going to go 100 you know ai in call centers or, you know, in customer services and then having to retract. But not because AI doesn't work.

21:56It's because AI works alongside humans. It's not, you know, there are two different sets of skills and intelligence. And I think a lot of this, we always have to dissect, you know, and say, okay, this announcement, what does that really mean, actually? And then a few days later, you read the story and you say, well, actually, they've had to rehire the humans because they were not able to do the job. But it's normal because it's different skills. So obviously things are changing, right? So we are infusing AI in everything that we do, right? So everything that we do, we're infusing AI. Now with agentic AI, but that doesn't mean that suddenly humans disappear.

22:38It means that we are also reshaping the way that we do things because AI brings benefits clearly. and but also adds new complexities and a new layer of humanity if you want like yeah and i don't think it's so like so black and white or so so i think there will be obviously there will be changes right there will be changes in the way the things that that you know when you you know where we locate humans and where we locate machines but there are things like you know a human a customer-centric approach, the centricity of the sort of client relationship, that cannot be automated. So, yeah, so I think it's very much of work in progress here.

23:31And I don't think it's so, we are in a situation where we can say things are like this or like that because we are evolving. And, I mean, AgenteKI obviously brings a lot of new exciting sort of challenges. But even there, it's not so rapid as people think. People, companies are starting with less problematic areas of automation. There's still a lot of governance issues that they become very relevant because it's not about being nice and good. It's also about survival and being able to innovate in the long term. So I think a lot of this is in progress. Yeah. I mean, one of the things I wondered is whether a lot of these companies like Wipro would shift into AI consulting or AI engineering or, you know, to help.

24:33there's a lot of companies in the west that want to implement ai but don't really have the skills india has this tremendous uh workforce uh skilled workforce do you see that happening at all yeah and i see this happening i'd say more i say that it's and it's probably where sort of the positioning of Prime Minister Modi at the summit comes in, right? Because what Modi said was, Prime Minister said, it's really interesting. What he basically said is, we're going to be leaders, for him, in responsible, trustworthy AI. The reason why he's saying this is because he's adding to the India, yes, we have a huge amount of people who are trained and engineers.

25:26We are we are the talent hub of the world. But we also do things in the right way. So the positioning is like, you know, India is the conscience of the world when it comes to AI. And obviously nobody, I mean, we're not born yesterday. Nobody does things because it is just out of idealism. People do things also because, especially the prime minister, because they want to push the country. And to me, it's important because what he's basically saying is we do things in the right way and you can trust us. We have a safe, trusted partner to innovate with. So he's not just saying we've got the talent.

26:11He's also saying, especially in this shifting geopolitical landscape, we can be a safe, trusted partner to work with. And obviously, countries around the world, they lack this talent. they do i mean i live in europe i live in germany you know that the germany the leader in in manufacturing in cars until you know it was but it's also a country that is going through come quite a complex economical situation at the moment as a lot of and in europe at the moment for example there is a big push for southern ai for many different reasons so i think what india saying is we do things, we can be a safe partner, we can build innovation that lasts and innovation that is sustainable.

26:58So it's not just a matter of numbers. It's not just a matter of, yes, we provide you the workforce. It's whatever you come and develop in India and you take and you use is also safe, trustworthy and reliable and is also rooted in values. And I think, so this is also related to what we were saying you know earlier in terms of where is India positioning Wipro is I mean to me this is part of the core of my work you know core my work is I want to make sure that whatever we do however I work with clients when we in when I am with the when we innovate with them or in enterprise AI that we produce created the software that we I want to make sure that we do it in a way that has privacy, security and legal protection, resilience into the design of what we're doing.

27:49And I feel strong in this because I'm part of an Indian company that is making a big push on this. And obviously, yes, you say consulting. Yes, I mean, we are consulting that in the sense that what you say, you know, we can, you talk to organizations that don't know how to go from a proof of concept to deployment of scale. And they don't know how to do that. They don't have necessarily the talent to do this. and they don't sometimes know that, you know, how to bring that proof of concept, how to evaluate it, how to make sure it's the right one, how to cut through the glamour and the media announcements and how to do something that really brings long-term value.

28:39And that is the problem often, not that a lot of companies have. And we see the reports in the newspapers, you know, we see, you know, is AI bringing return for investment? but it depends you know it depends on whether one is innovating for the sake of it or if an organization is really innovating because they want to bring low-term value and they've identified the right tools to do that so i mean yeah so i think this is this is the positioning of of india and therefore also um strengthen the position of my company yeah uh and uh another thing i I've found interesting is India is not, from what I understood, not really looking at horizontal AI.

29:28They're not building a national LLM. They're more focused on vertical applications. And is that reflected in Wipro's approach? There is a big push, I think, for real use cases and applications. So it's not just about the models. Yes, of course, you know, it is about models and small language models that reflect the language, for example, the variety of languages spoken in India that reflect sort of the sort of cultural background of the country. but it's more about it's also about applications and real use cases real applications that support and help Indian in everyday life and I think this is also what we're saying earlier you know this is where a lot of the strength is because if you if you think you know the ability they have to scale up and this is reflecting in I think the appetite that a company and and sort of all the teams across WIPA, for example, they have for saying, yes, okay, let's take this license and experiment and see what is a good use case.

30:50I mean, we are client zero from everything that we do. The reason for this is because there is a big appetite to try out things and to understand what are the use cases, how can we, is it worth scaling up, right? And then at that point, just say, is it really worth scaling up? We try in-house first. So I think it is reflecting also in the mentality of a lot of the leadership and wider leadership in companies as well. Yeah. I'm not sure that you're in a position to answer this, but I wondered, you know, you have this workforce in the business processes, outsourcing, I guess the O is outsourcing industry.

31:35Are the skill sets there adequate? Because another thing I saw in India was there's tremendous pressure because the openings in the elite, you know, the IIT, Indian Institute of Technologies Network, is so small. small and you've got this tremendous, uh, yeah. Uh, uh, number of, of young people that want to get into those institutions. And I think less than 20%, uh, succeed. So, uh, you've got this spillover that then goes into secondary institutions, uh, or not, but the, the workforce that we pro has assembled uh do you have to go you you talked about training can you do it through training to to bring these people up to speed do you is there do you need to to source a new talent that's more ai focused uh because it's not only we pro i imagine it's the entire services industry, IT services industry.

32:58Yeah. I mean, I can't speak for the whole country, obviously, but what I can say is what I've seen and I've witnessed. And yours is a good question. So basically the question is, because of competition in getting to this top-tier university, are we really dealing with a workforce that has deep engineering skills and DPI skills, you know, compared to, for example, what a worker in Microsoft would do, right? And I think that's the key question that India is also asking itself. I mean, the big investment in skills comes from that. The huge investment is investment in skills. And companies play their part.

33:46So one thing that I can speak for mine, I can't speak for the others, but one thing that we do, we have a huge sort of investment in skills looking at, we have a skills council where we look at what is in the market, sort of what are the needs of the market and also looking strategically what's about to come and where do we need to skill people. um so it's it's obvious you know that is uh that is um um there is a responsibility that you as a company you need to have because you need to understand you understand where you need to upskill where you need to acquire when you need to get people into courses and training where you need to set up your own and look i mean i also feel that a lot of this stuff there is still somehow, I mean, I can see my own field of work, right, which is around sort of security and privacy and in design.

34:41You don't have the places to learn yet. Because if I look at authentic AI, right, and I have to say, talk about, you know, to implement, and this is my job, and I have to look into how to implement security and privacy and human oversight in a jtki where do i learn it from okay i have to i i i i i've been teaching university but by the time i was teaching this year at the time i was teaching university it was a few years ago there wasn't there yet right so i have to use what i know and apply to it to this gather all the expertise gather you know and and then cascade to the rest of the organization and say, this is where we introduce how we design, for example, Agente K.