Pramath Raj Sinha On AI's Transformative Impact And The Necessity Of Lifelong Learning

In a recent interview,  Pramath Raj Sinha, founding Dean, ISB Hyderabad, founder of Ashoka University and co-founder of upGrad Harappa, delved into the profound impact of generative AI on various sectors, emphasising its transformative potential in both logical and creative tasks. He highlighted the importance of lifelong learning and a growth mindset for professionals to stay relevant in an ever-evolving technological landscape. Dr. Sinha also addressed the digital divide, stressing the need for broader access and understanding of AI, and shared insights into how educational and corporate environments can integrate AI to enhance efficiency and innovation.

How do you perceive generative AI impacting every sphere of life, including the world of work?

Generative AI is something that is transformational. It is something that is a big-big disruption. I think people have already said that, but I am in agreement with that. I think what will happen is that a lot of work will need logic and thinking through things will get done faster and better through generative AI. So everywhere there is thinking involved or putting some logic together. Bringing in some content to support that thinking. Those jobs and those activities at the workplace will get significantly transformed. I do think that anything from logic all the way to creativity can benefit from it. Where there is no logic, you just want to come up with something very creative or something very different. So the expanse of what it covers is quite large.

Do you think the technology today is providing a level playing field to all individuals or some people are just getting left out?

Obviously people are going to get left out, because you need access to technology at various levels. You need a device. But even if you have a device, you need a good understanding of how to use AI, it's not trivial. It's not as complicated as having to write a programming language set of code.

But it's also not as simple as simply typing into the screen. You have to know what to say and what to ask. Otherwise it's garbage in and garbage out. So no, the level playing field is not there. Those who are better have better access or are more familiar. Will be able to use it much better than others and that is the concern I think we need to get everybody to be aware of how to use it, where to use it and so on.

Is there any specific population segment that is getting left out?

Currently, it's primarily the tech-savvy individuals and early adopters who are using it. Others feel somewhat intimidated by it, not realising how simple it can be. Recently, I spoke with a group of high school teachers and principals. To my surprise, they were all using it. However, do they truly understand its potential? I don't think so.

When I first asked if they were using it, everyone raised their hands. But as I gave examples of how it could be used in a school setting, they listened intently and asked many questions. After the meeting, several of them approached me privately, seeking more training and expressing excitement about the possibilities.

This indicates that while people have some early exposure, they need more in-depth training to fully integrate it into their work. It's easy to run fun experiments, create CVs, or improve emails, but understanding how to leverage it for the most valuable aspects of their work hasn't happened yet.

Can you share some examples for it like how to incorporate that into work?

I'm taking the example of education and it could be a curriculum that could be created anyway. So I'm from Bihar and I grew up at the time of the Jayaprakash Narayan Movement post around the emergency and now not many people teach about. Right, because it may not be very significant in the curriculum.

In a history class for 14 year olds, people in IX grade, I would like to bring in some three classes on Srija Prakash Narayan on his background in the Purn Swaraj movement that he launched in Bihar in the 70s. Can you create the content and curriculum for it? Boom, it will come out.

When you say about this, can you create some quizzes that I can give to the children? It will create quizzes. Can you give me a final assessment that I can give the children? It will do that. Then you say well, so I don't have just one exam and so everybody copies answers. Can you create 10 possible assessments for me for the same course? It will create 10 assistants. And all this is happening in real time as I'm talking to you.

Are there examples that we can bring in connections to other such movements in India and abroad? I would like to highlight those to the classes so it takes the content and then says, now we design the assessments and the final exam. All this is happening at the speed at which I am writing this.

Yes, somebody needs to know that this is possible and I can actually get something pretty good. You may still doubt that it may not have everything in it, but I can tell you that it's a pretty 95 Per cent correct.

I'll give you another example. This is a fun example. I had to give a speech to eight year olds, school children and the school had come up with a very complicated topic around multiculturalism and global diversity and so on. So very high sounding words. And I had to speak to eight year olds. My reaction was, you know, am I going to do this? Never spoken to an eight year old and then you're giving me this topic which is so telling, that forget eight year olds 34 year olds will not understand.

So anyway, I had some ideas so I put those ideas into ChatGPT and said can you create a 15 minute speech for eight-year olds using these ideas? Can you believe it? It actually created a script for me and the script was amazing because it had two very key concepts that I had not thought of, which actually became the cornerstone of my speech. In fact, you talked about the fact that globalisation is like a river. And the river cuts through countries and carries things along, but it also has a negative impact because it can flood, it can erode the banks and cause damage. And therefore, to prevent damages, you've built bridges across countries, which is the whole point about multiculturalism and an amazing analogy that I would not have thought of. And by the way, I was doing this on the way to the speech because I had not prepared enough. So I was doing this on my mobile phone. So when I did this, I said that, oh, this idea connects, you know, that was the time of the G20. So everywhere there were these signs of Vasudeva Kutumbakam and so I said, ok can re-win this idea of Vasudeva Kutumbakam in the script? Boom! It did that.

Then I said, you know, is this actually just a phrase or is there a shlok behind it? And can you give me the full shlok, the origin of the shlok and the meaning of the shlok? It actually put all that into my speech, and by the time I got there I had all this available. I did not know the full shlok. The full shlok is actually very beautiful. It says that, “People who are small minded get into ‘I, me, mine’ People who are large hearted think of the world as a family.” Now it's such a beautiful shlok to tell eight-year olds. So the next day I have a friend in Bombay, he called me to say, you know what my son had gone to this conference that you were speaking at and he told me about this shlok that you gave him. He was very impressed. Now I'm admitting to you on a public forum that I would not have done it myself if I did not have help from ChatGPT.

So the idea was mine. The prompt was mine. But what would have taken me personally 2-3 days to prepare or I would have asked my team here if they could make my speech? Look at this idea. They would have made it and it would not have been my speech. It would have been their speech. I did not read from the script, but I got all the ideas that made it possible for me to give a very impressive speech. So the two examples I'm giving you, which are real examples that I have used.

What attitudinal change is required for professionals to thrive now, and how can they remain updated with the ever changing technology?

See the attitudinal change is that one has to understand that you have to learn all the time. Lifelong learning, as it is called, has to be real. You cannot want and aspire to success and achievement and growth in your career and think that whatever I know and my work experience is going to be enough. Earlier, the mindset was that I qualified myself from a good Bachelors, Masters, MBA, sometimes PhD and that is done.

And now because I'm working, I'm gathering lots of experience. And this experience itself is upgrading me and making me capable of dealing with the world and succeeding. And I don't need anything else. By doing and by working I will learn, that's no longer true. You will have to learn new things as they come up. You will have to identify what is relevant to you. What might be applicable to what you do? And make a proactive effort to go out and acquire that knowledge or train yourself and you have to have what is called a growth mindset. Which is to say that I am not limited by my past. I have immense potential. And to reach that full potential, I need to constantly keep enhancing my skills, my knowledge, my experiences to continue to grow rather than be limited to have a growth mindset rather than a limited month. So lifelong learning and a growth mindset are, I think are very important.

So do you see any organisations offering regular training programs to employees to stay updated with the changes, the technological changes happening?

Yes, enterprises are spending a lot of money and putting in a lot of effort into training their employees. There's absolutely no doubt. You know us at upGrad and I founded Harappa which is now part of upGrad. So I've been very involved in enterprise level training of employees. I think at last count we would have trained about 6 Lakh professionals just during FY24. But we work across about 3000 clients. And most of the upGrad work is around digital transformation, AI, data science and so on. So going back to the earlier discussion that we were having around AI and around lifelong learning, growth mindset, I think companies are putting in a lot of effort. See earlier it used to be difficult because you had to do it in person.

So you would have to send your employees somewhere or you would have to have a facilitator come in and still get people together physically. You were limited by the capacity of the facilitator. But what we have been doing is combining online distribution of content, availability of content online digitally, which makes it possible for people to join from wherever they are. And of course, combining it with something physical wherever it is required. So this hybrid model of training has really opened the doors for companies to train many, many more employees. And at consistent high quality. That's the key that you're not dependent on the quality of the trainer and the. Quality doesn't go down as you go into the interiors where it is difficult to find good trainers. You can actually have one central pool and you are broadcasting and training people around the world.

How do individual employees discern suitable technological tools or do they have a choice in that matter?

It depends. You know, with company sponsored programs, sometimes companies will pick you and tell you what to do and you don't have too much choice. But I do think that they welcome employees who raise their hands and say listen I was not included. Can you please include me? Because they want employees to show enthusiasm and want to support that enthusiasm. In other cases, companies make the content available and then they tell employees that you decide what you want to choose and pick. They create a content library. So for example Harappa has this Thriversity library at upGrad where you can go through all the content that we created at Harappa around thrived skills and you can pick and choose what you want. So there are all kinds of models that are available. And flexibility varies depending on what is the objective of the program of the company.

For the future, how will an individual or organisation's growth be determined as technology for its workspaces?

So I think this is the whole point around digital leadership. But before that I want to talk about just one point when you asked about how employees get flexibility, you know, places like upGrad offer a lot of free courses as well. So that's a good way to sample different areas of learning and then decide what you want to spend more time on. But coming back to the question that you asked, I think business leaders today have to be very savvy about understanding how technology, and particularly online and digital technologies, are affecting the running of my Business? And offering of products and services to my customers and competition, right? Who in competition is doing what with technology? And so understanding that from a leader manager perspective has become very important. And when you try and understand that and figure out which of these things is applicable to my business, my sector, my function. Then alongside that, you also have to think about how my employees, capability and skills need to be improved to solve that problem to improve on that problem. So trying in the talent and capacity and the skills and the competencies required to capture the digital opportunity is almost now an integral part of the thinking you have to understand what the threat is the disruption is what challenge and opportunities it is creating and to solve for that, what kind of talent and what kind of training do you need in your employees to be able to take advantage.

Shorter courses rather than a two year or four year course will be the solution for the individual to upskill themselves.

Yes, definitely. And we are again seeing this a lot at upGrad and it's very interesting to see that people are sort of quickly trying to enrol in these courses and do what I call just in time learning. So yes, a lot of people are doing that and that has been a big part of what people like upGrad and some of the online learning platforms are offering. Most of the people who are on these platforms tend to be working professionals and so they know now that they have to acquire these skills and they use these skills to also make career transitions. At upGrad, I think we trained 55,000. Students for transition and students were largely working professionals. They had some job switches. They had some promotions, they had some acceleration in their career. So yeah and learners were placed across 3,000 companies. So this is in addition to what I was talking about company sponsored training. So this is happening in a big big way where working professionals are taking short courses to upgrade themselves.

Mayank Badhwar

BW Reporters The reporter works as Senior Correspondent with BW Businessworld