Keynote-Vishal Sikka
19 Feb 2026 12:00h - 12:15h
Keynote-Vishal Sikka
Summary
The session opened with Speaker 1 thanking Sir Hasabis and introducing Vishal Sikka, founder and CEO of VNI and former Infosys CEO, as a leading thinker at the intersection of AI and enterprise [1-10]. Sikka began by highlighting that users who understand how to apply generative AI achieve dramatic productivity gains, citing a former classmate who rebuilt a nine-month, 15-person service in just 14 days, a more than 250-fold improvement [15-20]. He added a second example where a home-goods distributor used their AI product to evaluate exit strategies from a country in days instead of the year a traditional consultancy would need, illustrating AI’s disruptive speed [15-20]. From these cases he argued that being effective with AI requires not only technical knowledge but also awareness of its limitations and ways to overcome them [27-30]. He noted a large gap between large language models and business users in enterprises, and said that bridging this gap by delivering correct, trusted, and verifiable systems creates substantial value-creating opportunities [28-30]. He described his own company’s approach of adding a layer above language models to ensure reliability for business users [31-32]. Turning to the future, he warned that today’s AI suffers from hallucinations, limited world understanding, safety risks, and massive energy consumption, all of which must be solved before broader enterprise adoption [43-56]. He invoked the Prime Minister’s call for a “billion entrepreneurs” who can harness AI responsibly, emphasizing India’s abundant talent and past successes such as the Green Revolution and digital connectivity expansion [40-42][68-71]. Sikka stressed that mastering current AI and then leapfrogging its limitations is essential for building the next generation of safe, purposeful AI systems [43-56]. He linked this technological leap to a broader “human revolution,” where AI empowers individuals to create meaningful lives rather than merely artificial ones [74]. Throughout, he highlighted the need for imagination to envision possibilities beyond existing capabilities, noting that safety and energy efficiency are critical frontiers [39][55-56]. The discussion concluded that India’s human potential, combined with responsible AI development, can drive transformative change across industries and society [68-74]. Sikka thanked the audience, underscoring that the summit demonstrates a path toward a purposeful AI-driven future [75-76].
Keypoints
Major discussion points
– AI can deliver massive productivity gains for skilled users.
Sikka cites a 250-fold speed-up when a developer rebuilt a service in 14 days using generative AI, and a distributor who reduced a year-long country-exit analysis to a few days with AI-driven simulations [15-20].
– Bridging the gap between large language models and enterprise business users is essential.
He stresses that effectiveness requires not only AI knowledge but also understanding its limits, and that delivering “correct, trusted, verifiable, reliable systems” creates huge value for enterprises [27-32].
– Current AI systems have critical limitations that must be solved before wider adoption.
Sikka highlights hallucinations, safety risks, and enormous energy consumption (e.g., 720 MW data centers) as “existential issues” that need the same rigor applied to nuclear power and other mature technologies [44-56].
– India possesses the human and entrepreneurial capacity to lead an AI-driven transformation.
He references the Prime Minister’s call for a “billion entrepreneurs,” past national successes such as the Green Revolution and nationwide connectivity, and urges the nation to “leapfrog” today’s AI to build the next generation [40-43][68-73].
– The vision is a “human revolution” powered by purposeful, safe AI that enables individuals to create meaningful lives, not just economic gain.
The closing remarks frame AI as a tool for a societal shift where every person becomes an entrepreneur of life, not merely of profit [74-75].
Overall purpose / goal
The discussion aims to inspire stakeholders-especially Indian technologists, policymakers, and business leaders-to (1) recognize AI’s transformative productivity potential, (2) address its technical and ethical shortcomings, and (3) mobilize India’s vast human capital to build safe, trustworthy AI that drives a broad-based socioeconomic revolution.
Overall tone
The tone begins highly enthusiastic and celebratory, highlighting dramatic productivity wins. It then shifts to a cautiously serious register as Sikka outlines AI’s safety, reliability, and energy challenges. By the conclusion, the tone becomes optimistic and motivational, calling for collective action and framing the AI journey as an exciting, purpose-driven “human revolution.”
Speakers
– Vishal Sikka – Founder & CEO of VNI; former CEO of Infosys; computer scientist and AI thought leader. [S1]
– Speaker 1 – Event moderator/host (role not specified). [S3]
Additional speakers:
– (none)
The session opened with Speaker 1 expressing sincere gratitude to Sir Hasabis for his “profound and illuminating address” and then introducing the next speaker. Speaker 1 highlighted Vishal Sikka’s dual role as founder and CEO of VNI and recalled his earlier tenure as Infosys chief executive, where he led “one of the most ambitious transformations in Indian IT history.” She noted that VNI is “focused on human-centred artificial intelligence,” positioning Sikka as a leading thinker at the intersection of AI and enterprise [1-4][5-10].
Sikka began by thanking the audience and describing the event as “wonderful” and “amazing” [11-13]. He then remarked, “I have worked in AI for the last 38 years,” establishing his authority on the subject [14]. He also thanked the Honorable Ashwini Vasanthaji, Ministry of IT, for a colleague’s assistance [55-56]. His first observation was that skilled users of generative AI can achieve dramatic productivity gains. He illustrated this with a former Stanford classmate who rebuilt a nine-month, 15-engineer service in just 14 days using a generative-coding tool – a more than 250-fold improvement [15-20]. A second example involved a home-goods distributor that, with Sikka’s AI product, reduced a year-long country-exit analysis to a few days, a speed that would previously have required “heavy-duty consultants” [20-21]. He described this as “incredible power” that is “deeply disruptive” yet also enables “unprecedented things” that were impossible before [21-24].
Turning to his second point, Sikka argued that real effectiveness with AI demands not only technical know-how but also a clear understanding of AI’s limitations. He cited the quotation from Bhaj Govindam – “Samprapte sanihite kale…” – to illustrate the limits of book knowledge when applied to practice [22-23]. He also referred to Yoshua Demis’s description of a “jagged frontier” in AI safety [24-25]. He identified a “huge gap between LLMs and the business users inside enterprises” and stressed that bridging this gap requires “correct, trusted, verifiable, reliable systems” [27-30]. He explained that his company builds a “layer that sits above the language models” to guarantee correctness and deliver tangible business value [31-32]. Overcoming the gap, he said, can “transform every existing system” and “amplify” end-users, turning tasks that once required specialists into routine capabilities [33-36]. He added that imagination is essential to see what is not yet there, and highlighted India’s abundant talent, noting the Honorable Prime Minister has called for a billion entrepreneurs-people who can overcome these challenges and deliver value using AI [39-41][S9].
The third point addressed the need to “leapfrog” today’s AI. Sikka listed the principal shortcomings of current models: hallucinations, limited understanding of the physical world, safety risks, and massive energy consumption. He noted that “Yoshua Demis also talked about this… we have to solve this issue,” linking the hallucination problem to broader expert concerns [46-47]. He warned that “swarms of agents can be made to do completely reckless things,” underscoring the urgency of robust safety regimes [48-49]. To illustrate the energy issue, he recounted a colleague who walked 32 000 steps and ate two burgers, comparing human energy use (≈ 100 W) with a 720 MW data centre on California’s Highway 101, and concluded that “many zeros still need to be removed from these models’ energy consumption” [58-60][66-67]. He likened AI safety to the decades-long safety regime of nuclear power, insisting that similar rigor must be applied to AI [44-57]. These challenges, he argued, represent “tremendous opportunity” for India, which has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to mobilise human capital – from the Green Revolution to today’s billion-plus connectivity [68-73].
In his closing remarks, Sikka framed the emerging AI landscape as a catalyst for a “human revolution” powered by “good AI” and “purposeful AI.” He envisioned a future where every individual becomes an “entrepreneur of life,” creating meaningful experiences rather than merely artificial ones, and expressed optimism that the summit itself shows a clear path toward this vision [74-75]. He concluded with a note of enthusiasm, saying the journey would be “so much fun” and thanking the audience [76].
Overall, the session combined an enthusiastic celebration of AI-driven productivity with a cautious appraisal of its current limitations and a forward-looking call to action. While concrete solutions for bridging the LLM-business gap, eliminating hallucinations, ensuring safety, and reducing energy use remain open questions, the discussion underscored the urgency of addressing these issues to unlock AI’s full socioeconomic potential [44-57][66-67][S45][S47][S1].
Thank you so much, Sir Hasabis, for your very profound and illuminating address. We really thank you. Sincere gratitude to your address. Ladies and gentlemen, and now I would like to invite Mr. Vishal Sikka. He’s the founder and CEO of VNI. As CEO of Infosys, Vishal Sikka has led one of the most ambitious transformations in Indian IT history. Before leaving to build VNI, a company focused on human -centered artificial intelligence. He is a computer scientist by training, a philosopher by temperament. He is one of the most original thinkers of the intersection of AI and enterprise. Please welcome the founder and CEO of VNI, Mr. Vishal Sikka.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Wow, wonderful introduction and what an amazing event. I want to share three points from a long time that I have spent in AI. My first point is that what we see today in the world of AI, people who know what they are doing with AI are astonishingly effective with AI. Recently, a friend of mine, he and I were students together at Stanford. He has a large service that he runs, open public service. That service was built by 15 people, very world -class engineers, over nine months. Recently, he rebuilt that service entirely by himself in 14 days using one of the generative AI coding tools. So if you are counting, that is about more than 250 times improvement in productivity.
now he’s a genius and not everyone gets a 250 times productivity gain but you will see that people who understand how to use ai are astonishingly effective with it and i had a similar experience recently with a customer of mine who is a distributor of home goods and one of their main suppliers shut down their factories in one of their countries and they did analysis using our product all kinds of simulation scenarios and over a few days they reached the decision that they need to exit that country entirely i asked him you know such a monumental decision to get out of an entire country how long would that have taken you before and he said easily it would take you a year to get out of that country and i said you know what i mean by that it would have taken a year and it would have involved heavy duty consultants and things like that So, we now have instant access to knowledge in any language, a condensation of things that we can present in any way.
It is an incredible power. And yes, it is deeply disruptive to the ways that we have worked before, the way that we have done things in the past. But at the same time, and even more importantly, we can do unprecedented things with this, things that we could never do before. So, this astonishing effectiveness, and Yoshua referred to this as a jagged frontier, it is not uniform. Not everyone sees this. So, that’s my second point. Being effective with AI requires not only a knowledge of AI itself, but understanding its limitations and how to overcome those limitations. There is a huge gap between LLMs. and the business users inside enterprises especially and how to bring value to those users.
And overcoming that gap is where a lot of value -creating opportunity is. Bridging that gap requires delivering correct systems, trusted, verifiable, reliable systems that deliver value to people. My own company works in this area, a layer that sits above the language models and delivers value to business users while ensuring correctness and things like that. When we overcome that gap, we can deliver massive value. Mukesh Bhai talked about it just now. We can transform every existing system, legacy systems, enormous complexities inside enterprises can be removed. Industries can be transformed. We can give end users wings. We can end users. We can amplify them. to deliver things that were not possible to do before, that or in the best case, it required professionals to do this.
Doing that also requires not just overcoming the limitations of AI, but also imagination to see what is not there, to see what is possible. India has all of this in great abundance. The Honorable Prime Minister has called for a billion entrepreneurs, people who can overcome these and deliver value using AI. And I think this is exactly what the world needs and what India has the potential for. My third point is that we not only have to master today’s AI, but we have to leapfrog it. AI today has enormous limitations. I have worked in AI for the last 38 years. You know… One of our scriptures is Bhaj Govindam. It was written by the Shankaracharya. And it has a beautiful line.
Samprapte sanihite kale, nahi nahi rakshati dukhrin karane. What it means is that when you are faced with a life or death situation, the knowledge of a book does not help you. Knowledge without wisdom does not save us. That wisdom comes from living, from doing, from being in the world. AI today has plenty of limitations. Yoshua mentioned hallucinations. That’s one of the main issues blocking the use of AI in enterprises. But beyond hallucinations, understanding the world, understanding physical activities, the physical movement, this is one of the next frontiers. Safety. safety of AI and the Honorable Prime Minister talked about this today is an existential issue swarms of agents can be made to do completely reckless things and we don’t yet have ways to understand or deal with this and Yoshua Demis also talked about this we have to solve this issue we have to deliver AI that is safe we have done this with nuclear power for the last 80 plus years we can and we must do this with AI energy is another one of these issues where I live in California on highway 101 just north of San Tomas I drive by there every time I go to see my dad there is a massive data center that is coming up it’s 720 megawatts and this idea that I write a prompt and these gazillion genes GPUs blast into existence to produce a response and then I make a tiny change to that prompt and then I do that again.
It just seems like a completely absurd idea, especially to someone who has been around AI for such a long time. I have, thanks to the minister, Ministry of IT, Honorable Ashwini Vasanthaji, I have a colleague who has been accompanying me throughout this conference and he told me that yesterday he walked 32 ,000 steps. And I asked him, what did you eat? And he said, I ate two burgers. Shubham, if you’re here. Two burgers. You know, we normally eat 2 ,000 calories in a day. That’s about a 100 -watt light bulb, like less than one of these light bulbs. And out of that, our brain, our nervous system is maybe 15, 20 watts. That’s like when your laptop is in sleep mode, it takes more power than that.
So, there are… many zeros still to be removed from these models, and the models themselves have to be removed. So, I think that there is a tremendous opportunity here. India is a country of the human potential. We have plenty of times before delivered the ability to, you know, billion plus Indians. Mukesh Bhai talked about Jio, and Sunil talked about Airtel, and how now we have billion plus Indians who have data and connectivity. When I was young, one of my earliest childhood memories is of worry in my parents’ faces around food. They used to tell stories of how there was a shortage of food, and then the green revolution happened, and India is now one of the largest exporters of food in one generation.
So, I think that when you look at the time of intelligence, it is not only an opportunity to learn about this technology, to learn to master this technology, to understand its limitations, but to leapfrog that and to build the next generation of it. And as this summit so vividly demonstrates, we can be on our way to a human revolution powered by AI, by good AI, by purposeful AI, where every one of us, a billion entrepreneurs, is not just making a living but is making a life, not some artificial life or some artificial general life, but our own life and the life of others. And that would be so much fun. Fun to do. Thank you so much.
“Speaker 1 expressed sincere gratitude to Sir Hasabis for his “profound and illuminating address”.”
The knowledge base records a thank-you to Sir Hassabis for a very profound and illuminating address, confirming the gratitude expressed. [S2]
“Speaker 1 highlighted Vishal Sikka’s dual role as founder and CEO of VNI and recalled his earlier tenure as Infosys chief executive, where he led “one of the most ambitious transformations in Indian IT history.””
The source explicitly introduces Vishal Sikka as the founder and CEO of VNI and states that as CEO of Infosys he led one of the most ambitious transformations in Indian IT history. [S1] and [S2]
“Sikka described the event as “wonderful” and “amazing”.”
A related source describes the conversation as “amazing and mind-bending”, providing additional context about the tone of the event. [S68]
“Speaker 1 referred to Sir Hasabis (spelled “Hasabis”).”
The authoritative source spells the name as Sir Hassabis; the report’s spelling is a minor error. [S2]
The two speakers largely converge on a respectful tone and a shared belief that AI should be developed in a human‑centered, purposeful manner that serves societal needs. Beyond these points, the discussion is dominated by Sikka’s detailed arguments on productivity gains, enterprise value, safety, and India’s entrepreneurial potential, which are not directly echoed by Speaker 1.
Limited but meaningful consensus: agreement is confined to introductory gratitude and a high‑level endorsement of human‑centric AI, suggesting a supportive but not deeply coordinated stance on the detailed policy and technical challenges of AI.
The exchange is largely complementary: Speaker 1’s introductory remarks praise Sikka’s background, and Sikka expands on AI’s potential, challenges, and India’s role. No substantive conflict or opposing viewpoints emerge between the two speakers.
Minimal – the dialogue shows alignment rather than contention, suggesting a unified stance on the promise of AI and the need for responsible, scalable deployment.
The discussion was shaped by a series of pivotal remarks that moved from vivid, data‑driven examples of AI’s productivity gains to a nuanced examination of its uneven adoption, reliability, ethical wisdom, safety, sustainability, and national impact. Each thought‑provoking comment acted as a turning point—first grounding the conversation in real‑world results, then introducing cautionary perspectives, and finally expanding the scope to societal, environmental, and historical dimensions. Collectively, these insights transformed the talk from a simple showcase of AI potential into a multidimensional dialogue about how India can responsibly harness AI for a transformative, inclusive future.
Disclaimer: This is not an official session record. DiploAI generates these resources from audiovisual recordings, and they are presented as-is, including potential errors. Due to logistical challenges, such as discrepancies in audio/video or transcripts, names may be misspelled. We strive for accuracy to the best of our ability.
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