Responsible AI, innovation can go hand-to-hand in India: Wipro’s Global Privacy chief

Ivana Bartoletti, who is also a visiting fellow at Virginia Tech, said that while concerns about AI taking up jobs are valid, it will also lead to the creation of new jobs

India’s answer to Deepseek and OpenAI can only come through a partnership between the government, private sector, and research institutions, said Ivana Bartoletti, the Global Chief Privacy & AI Governance Officer at Wipro Ltd.

Bartoletti, who is also a visiting fellow at Virginia Tech, added that while concerns about AI taking up jobs are valid, it will also lead to the creation of new jobs.

Edited excerpts:

Where do you see India in the AI scenario when compared to other global players who are definitely ahead, in terms of funding, GPU? 

In India, there is a strong ambition, which I think Prime Minister Modi has also highlighted really well, which is the ambition to grow with AI in three dimensions - infrastructure, data centres and education and skills. I read recently that India could, and I think it was mentioned by Modi as well, could sort of invest up to $900 billion through the private sector. Obviously, there are issues that are not just specific to India, but for a big part of the world around the import of semiconductors and advanced software. However, I think that there are opportunities because it means that the investment in open source could also lead to building on recent innovation.

There has been a lot of conversation about India being left behind in the large language model (LLM) generative AI since China’s Deepseek. Both Deepseek and OpenAI’s private sector initiatives. Should India’s answer not come from the homegrown tech giants like Wipro, Infosys, TCS etc? There is an argument to be made that our private sector does not reward risk and innovation enough.

I agree with you. And in fact we do invest. I am thinking about not only Wipro’s financial investments but our R&D lab as well. The point to me is that innovation comes from a wide number of things. For example, how do we answer to India’s challenges and create LLMs that answers to India’s unique issues like diversity, multiple languages etc. Innovation comes from collaboration across industry, government and research centres. This is what I feel is the way forward. The open source investment by the government, for example, what will it mean for India? What will it mean for India to have this enormous pool of talent and skill set.

We want to talk about regulation. The US is aiming for minimal regulation in AI because it states it wants to promote innovation. On the other hand, Europe is considering stricter checks and balances. How should India go about it?

Based on what Prime Minister Modi said at the Paris AI summit, I think there is a very strong intent by India to lead on responsible AI globally. Modi started his speech with an example of inclusivity and bias, and the negative effect that AI can have. And this is very important, especially in the context of a diverse country like India.

The US has legislation at state level. Especially in the labour market, whether you use algorithms to hire and fire or algorithms to evaluate performance, there is a lot of regulation happening locally, whether it's Colorado, Texas or New York. South Korea has just produced its binding AI regulation and the European Union has the European AI Act. I think that ultimately customers and companies will use the AI systems that they trust and therefore it is important for countries to determine what that trust is. So, privacy, transparency, explainability, human oversight, these are fundamentals for people to trust AI.

And don't forget that India has a privacy legislation, whose rules are still at the consultation stage, but will soon become viable. That will play a role. The fact that within that there is a push for responsible AI. So I think there is a strong sense that responsibility and innovation can go hand in hand in India. AI has never existed in isolation or a legal vacuum. You have quality legislation in India, you have consumer protection, all of which is applicable to AI as well.

What is your take regarding concerns of AI impacting human employment?

You know that a lot of people obviously would be concerned, in the sense of what's going to happen to their jobs. And I think the jobs that are going to be a risk are the ones that do not work with AI right now. Second thing, there is no doubt that AI will replace some roles. But I think that the impact on jobs is massively overplayed. Not just because there will be no new roles created, but also because the collaboration between humans and machines is really the key. So I think it is important for governments to invest in literacy and to push companies to democratize AI in workplaces.

How is Wipro expanding its AI use cases and is there a particular sector where there’s more demand?

We're working across all sectors including telecom, automotive financial services and even insurance. However, this also depends on adoption of this technology, which was a big topic at the AI Summit in Paris. There’s been a big transformation process to move from proof of concept (POC) to actual deployment to production. So, the demand varies across different countries, like the risk appetite of different sectors.