'Silly, old programmes...': Infosys founder Narayana Murthy slams India's AI hype

Elaborating on the two fundamental principles in AI, namely machine learning and deep learning, Murthy said that while deep learning imitates how human brain works, machine learning's help is based on a large amount of data.

Infosys Co-Founder N R Narayana Murthy speaking at Tiecon Mumbai 2025 event said that most of the artificial intelligence solutions sold these days were "silly, old programmes" touted as futuristic work.

“I think somehow it has become a fashion in India to talk of AI for everything. I have seen several normal ordinary programs touted as AI,” the IT services company's co-founder reportedly said.

Elaborating on the two fundamental principles in AI, namely machine learning and deep learning, Murthy said that while deep learning imitates how the human brain works, machine learning's help is based on a large amount of data.

He explained that machine learning handles supervised algorithms since it has to be fed a lot of data, and deep learning on the other hand can handle “unsupervised algorithms”, and it uses the data to create new branches and is able to take decisions.

“So unsupervised data, which uses deep learning and neural networks, has much greater potential to do things that mimic human behaviour better. But what I am seeing being called AI is silly, old programs,” Murthy said.

In the same event, Murthy said that job creation by innovative entrepreneurs, and not freebies, will help eliminate poverty.

Poverty will "vanish" like dew on a sunny morning if we are able to create innovative enterprises, he added.

"I have no doubt that each of you will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and that is how you solve the problem of poverty, you don't solve the problem of poverty by freebies, no country has succeeded in that," Murthy said, addressing the entrepreneurs' grouping.

At present, India feeds 80 crore people through monthly cash transfers. The comments from the renowned business leader come as a debate rages on freebies and their costs.

Later, Murthy clarified that he does not know much on politics or governance, but gave some recommendations from a policy framework perspective.

(With PTI inputs)