Move on and viewers, artificial intelligence has become a concept synonymous with the 21st century. From healthcare to transportation, artificial intelligence is driving unprecedented changes in all aspects of our lives. Absolutely. And to enlighten us on the long-standing impact AI might have for us, we have with us a media trailblazer, and joining her is a phenomenal entrepreneur who started his journey at just 19 by transforming the hospitality industry. It is our pleasure to invite on the stage the CEO of Zuckerberg Media, Randy Zuckerberg, and founder and group CEO of OYO Rooms, Ritesh Agarwal, to share with us their insights on how artificial intelligence will change the future of humanity. And they will be in conversation with Aisha Faridi. A round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. Over to you, Aisha.
Randy, Ritesh, both of you, thank you so much for taking time out and helping us understand what can AI really do, what does AI really mean, and how can it help fast-track India to top three. But you know, Randy, welcome to India. First, it's not the first trip, is it?
No, I think this is actually my sixth or seventh trip here. Um, what I mean, first of all, what a beautiful venue we're in and uh incredible event. It's a delight to be here. Thank you so much.
But um, Randy, tell me, you know when we talk about AI, you always think of sci-fi movies, you think of something like that, exactly that terminator robot. It's got a dark side to it and there's always the evil versus the good. What exactly is AI? I know a lot of it is changing our lives as we speak right now. What's AI of the future?
Yeah, well the good news is that we are all still here on this stage, so the world still needs actual humans to have an event like this and gather together. But when I was at university, I remember studying in psychology class the Turing test, where they would actually sit on one side of a door and then it would either be a computer or a human answering your questions, and you had to guess: is it a human, is it a computer? Now 20 years ago it was very easy to tell, but the question that was really sparking was: can computers think? And what is thought? What is creativity? And I think a lot of those questions that we were tackling 20 years ago are really at the heart of this Renaissance era that we're in right now.
They... you're at the helm of a business which perhaps is actually using AI, right? You know people's preferences, their holiday destinations, their corporate travel patterns, their leisure options. How do you envision AI to be in... I mean, I'm not even going to talk a decade, let's talk five years from now.
Yeah, first off, thanks for having me here. I had the opportunity to be here when this venue was being inaugurated. I think to see an incredible event like India Economic Clave come here... I was there at the Mumbai event a couple of years back, so fascinating. So congratulations on choosing this venue also. Thanks for having Randy and me together. When our prime minister visited us a few years back, he said AI stood for America and India, so I'm glad you chose an American and an Indian.
Are you feeling by the way the minority though right now?
Right, I think it's an equal world, so I feel like an equal. But look, to the point of... but we all in black, so I got the memo. I think coming to the part of AI, look, I can tell you, I live in a family. We have four siblings. My eldest sister works for a rating agency, second sister works for a big four, brother works for an IT services company, and I run a hotel company. And whenever we all get together, our conversations are only about how each of our jobs and our businesses are getting changed by AI. So you may think hospitality industry is going through it, but it's true for everyone else in our business. Look, I think AI is transforming everything. We change our prices now millions of times a day. Could not have happened with humans. Typically every hotel is supposed to have a revenue manager. Now those revenue managers are data scientists. And on the other hand, a lot of the everyday work...
So two of your sisters have more job, right? Sure, opportunity because some of their companies are doing the same work.
Yes, but the other is... I think 10 or 12 years ago, maybe 14, smartphones came by. There was zero dollars of economy that was transacting on smartphones before that. Today a company like ours, which is worth a few billion dollars, is built only on the back of smartphones. And if you combine so many trillions of dollars that have been built purely on the back of smartphones, I think AI is going to do just that. So either we learn how to go from being a smartphone to an AI company, or there will be another Ritesh who's a 19-year-old kid who'll figure out an AI way of building a business in our industry, and I don't want that to happen for sure.
So how is this Ritesh adapting to the fast moving world of AI?
Look, I'm learning a lot. I think my favorite job is getting two ChatGPT archetypes to debate with each other about all kinds of questions I ask. I have recently been trying a lot of Anthropic beyond ChatGPT because it's easier for professional work. We have an OYO company-wide program where any employee, whether you're a salesperson, business development person, you can send ideas about how to use AI in everyday life, because it's going to change everything. Right? Like your finance teams will probably not do a lot of the work that they do today. I almost compare AI world like our Hindu version of Ram Rajya, where you don't need to do a lot of work and machines will do most of it for you, so we can do thinking and perceiving new ideas.
Yeah, absolutely. But you know, like Ritesh said, Randy, we had the iPhone moment and now we have the AI revolution at hand. Tell me, is it going to be an isolated something, few sectors touching it, few sectors delving into it, or do you think economies at large and at scale and mass will have to adapt to AI if they want to reach and climb up the global ladder of the fastest growing economies?
It's a great question. And I think the analogy to the smartphone is spot-on. Because I remember sitting in Silicon Valley the summer the smartphone came out, and it was such a divided moment in Silicon Valley. I think about half the companies said, 'Oh no, this is just a passing trend. We're going to wait till things go back to normal.' And then the other half, including all of us at Facebook, thought, 'Oh no, this is the way consumers are headed.' And I remember we took a massive hit to the bottom line of the company to retrain every single engineer and upskill everyone in the company on smartphones and apps and the ecosystem. And it was a huge gamble, but ultimately I think that saved the company first of all and set us up for success. And you could very clearly see a few years later which companies had taken that gamble and which hadn't. I think we are sitting at a very similar moment with artificial intelligence. I think the companies that take the effort to upskill their workforce, to really put AI into the DNA of every role in a company, I think three, four years from now we're going to see a very similar trajectory to what we saw with the dawn of the smartphone.
But you know, with AI always comes that big question: 'Oh my God, is it going to be a job mass job loss? Is it going to have the domino effect? Is everyone going to have to reskill themselves, or will everyone just lose their jobs?' Break that myth for us.
Yeah, you know, I think for sure there will be a bit of a messy middle with any new innovation. While we're in the process of upskilling, while we're in the process of getting used to it, we will have a divided workforce where there are people whose jobs become redundant sooner than we can retrain people for new things. But what will emerge are the kinds of careers that don't even exist today, which are so exciting. I mean, the kind of data science roles and how they will evolve. I like to say that people who use AI well are like spellcasters. It's like being in Harry Potter and having a magic wand. You know, maybe the work you used to do is the work of the magic wand, and now you're doing the work of casting the spell and instructing the magic wand. And the roles I think all of us will have in business don't even exist today, which is both scary and very exciting. So yes, there will be a few period where we're retraining people and it's a little messy and we're figuring out where people fit into the ecosystem, and then I think we really emerge in a new tomorrow.
What could be the ethical considerations? Because you know, right now you're so worried about data leaks, about scams arising. You don't know the boundaries and you've not really set the boundaries because you don't know what you're getting into. What are various governments and policy makers doing to sort of set the boundaries right, have those ethical considerations in place when you talk about AI?
Yes, I think about this a lot because I'm such a fan of innovation and rushing forward, but having been on the front lines of Web 2.0, the only thing that I wish I could go back and tell myself was that, you know, yes, innovate into the future, but maybe take a little bit of a pause to think about what could happen and how to get ahead of that first. So even just an example from my own career: one of the projects I'm most proud of was really being at the dawn of live streaming and creating Facebook Live and our live streaming functionality. And I remember those first few years, suddenly we were seeing politicians able to get in front of their country for the first time, celebrities, sporting figures. It was such an exciting moment. And then I remember I also saw someone live stream going into a church and shooting. And that broke my heart, that moment in technology, because never did I dream as a kind of a young 20-year-old rushing into the future that people would even dawn on someone to use technology in such a horrifying way. And so I wish that I could just kind of go back to young Randy and say, 'Let's have a think. You know, here we all are in this room, the leaders of industry. We have an opportunity right now to shape the future, but be thoughtful about it.' And I think that's something that's really important.
So do you think, creators such as you, and I'm calling you Creator here because you did create Facebook Live which did change most of our lives, do you think the responsibility and the onus lies with the consumers, the users, or is it with creators such as you who have to set the rules right there in the beginning?
I think yes, to the entire ecosystem. I think there's onus on the data sets, making sure that they're diverse enough and representative enough and unbiased. I think there certainly is going to be consumer education around how to tell what's real and what's not. And I think we're going to have to start rethinking even fields like media and journalism. Do you disclose when something is co-authored by AI? Do you disclose what your prompts were when you're putting out a media story? I think these are kind of all of the ethical questions that we need to figure out.
I'm going to come back to that media bit in just a second. But Ritesh, when you sit with your sisters on the dining table and the conversation is only around AI, what's the worry in your head? While it does facilitate your business for the good, what are the sort of ethical concerns that you have?
