Tech Explained: Will AI Take Our Jobs? Ashwini Vaishnaw Answers at AI Impact Summit in Simple Terms

As artificial intelligence continues to become part of daily life, concerns about jobs, trust, and regulation keep growing. At the AI Impact Summit, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw spoke exclusively to Brut, addressing questions on employment, reskilling, deepfakes, healthcare innovation, and why India sees itself as a key player in the global AI ecosystem.

Journalist: Do you think AI is going to take us take our jobs away?

Ashwini Vaishnaw: Every time new technology comes this question definitely comes and we should take it very seriously. The right way of managing this transition is to have the right skills in our younger generation and for that we are working with the industry, academia and government. Three of us together will work for getting the right skills both in the Ministry of Education as well as in various… the people who are already employed reskilling and upskilling them is going to be a very important part of the AI mission.

Journalist: When you were 20 years old did you ever think that something like AI will come and maybe ease our work so much?

Ashwini Vaishnaw: Well, I invented the first network printer using 8085 microprocessor. Of course, that’s way back. Then I invented the text to speech transformer again Intel prepared a special card for that. I had to write the entire DBMS for that, that was way back of course but I was always optimistic that technology will progress very fast. We studied neural networks when we were in the college but the way things have changed in the recent years this is really phenomenal. If you ask me the real applications of AI started coming way back in 2000-2002 when the convergence of sensors, compute and communication started happening and it was possible to have algorithms which can do predictive maintenance and it all started first with the industrial world — transportation, industries, large machines and now it has come in the consumer space. So this is a journey which has been happening. I’m, of course, very clued in. So I believe that this is a change which is real change and we must get prepared for it. We must adapt. We must use the good part of it and we must save our society from the harmful impacts of it.

Journalist: Social media watermarking has been in place by the government. Do you think that’s a way of attacking the deep fakes that are happening everywhere?

Ashwini Vaishnaw: Yes, we must make sure that the society is protected and that trust among the institutions is maintained and that’s why it’s very important to separate the fake content from genuine content and that’s why these regulations have been brought into watermark AI generated synthetic content. So that at least the users should be able to decide whether they want to trust it or they don’t want to trust it.

Journalist: So you were taking a stroll at the AI startups which that unique AI that you found is the best or which you personally liked?

Ashwini Vaishnaw: I think lot of potential in healthcare. I believe that the western world has a very expensive healthare system and we can probably bring a new health care system, a new model which can be a very good affordable model while being very effective. That is one major thing I found.

Second thing I found is lot of use cases in agriculture, use cases in industrial activities, use cases in creative world. it’s just phenomenal. The kind of impact which AI has on each and every sector. It’s quite phenomenal.

Journalist: I have one question because we saw there were several mismanagements yesterday. People alleged that their things were stolen and you know things like that. So is there anything… any accountability management which is in process?

Ashwini Vaishnaw: No, we have set up the war room yesterday itself and today if you see I’ve spoken to more than 50 or 60 persons and the response is very good. Today we have had more than a lakh visitors more than one lakh visitors in Bharat Mandapam and it has gone very smooth. I think this will continue to go like this.

‍Journalist: What is that one message you want to send the global giants who are part of the AI summit in India?

Ashwini Vaishnaw: The AI summit has practically been the largest AI summit in the entire world. whether there are investors, whether startups, whether policy makers, heads of government, heads of states, they are all coming here because everybody believes that India is going to be one of the most important countries as far as AI is concerned. We see lot of investment flowing in the infra layer of the AI stack, we can expect in the coming years more than $200 billion investment. In the startups, the VCs are committing about $17 billion worth investments and I can see a lot of energy among the youth, a lot of optimism, lot of potential to have new types of solutions.

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