India’s experience in diffusing technology will help it lead artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, Infosys co-founder and non-executive chairman Nandan Nilekani said during a fireside chat with Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei at the India AI Summit in Delhi.
“We learned that diffusion is a technique. It’s both art and science. It involves institutions, policymaking, negotiations, dealing with incumbents and newcomers, and strategies for execution. If all the investments in AI are to deliver value to society — not just to individuals — we will have to focus on diffusion pathways to take this to everyone,” Nilekani said.
Amodei flags slow enterprise adoption of AI
Amodei, however, noted that adoption would take time. “There’s a duality to this technology. We have AI models that are very technically proficient, but the enterprise adoption is very slow. Even if we froze the current technology capability, I think economic impact could be much greater eventually because it just takes time to integrate the technology,” he explained.
The Anthropic CEO said India could experience both greater upsides and greater downsides from AI. “While the advantages from this technology are huge, there’s also a great potential for disruption. We need to ensure that the benefits of the technology reach everyone in an economic sense, in terms of healthcare and other ways. So, while India offers a keen distillation of the benefits for AI but also the risks along with it,” Amodei warned.
Nilekani calls for inclusive AI applications
Nilekani agreed that AI must serve society broadly. “Everybody must benefit from it,” he said, highlighting sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, language access, and education where impactful applications could be implemented.
He emphasised that inclusion remains a critical part of AI adoption in India, given the country’s linguistic diversity. “We also need to make AI agents work for people because you’re hiding all the sophistication behind the agent. India is a country which is very positive about technology in general and AI in particular. And we need to take advantage of that and not let them down by giving them truly transformative applications using AI, which you will see in the next two to three years,” Nilekani added.
Amodei also stressed that broader diffusion of AI is necessary to avoid social and economic backlash. “The race to the bottom is faster than the race to the top. So, all of us who have a stake in AI being useful to humanity have to accelerate and redouble our efforts to make the diffusion happen. Otherwise, the consequences are going to be very difficult because there’s going to be a backlash,” he cautioned.
Both leaders agreed that India’s scale, digital infrastructure, and experience in democratising technology — from Aadhaar to UPI — provide a strong foundation for ensuring that AI becomes a truly inclusive force for development.