Infosys Co-founder Narayana Murthy Takes A Dig At AI Hype In India: ‘Silly And Old Programming’
1. Bhavish Aggarwal, the CEO of Ola, recently made a statement about artificial intelligence (AI) in India. 2. He mentioned that discussing AI has become somewhat of a trend in the country. 3. He believes that there is a lot of hype surrounding the technology, with everyone wanting to incorporate it into their businesses. 4. However, he also stressed the importance of understanding the technology and its implications thoroughly before implementing it. 5. Aggarwal's comments have sparked a conversation about the responsible and effective use of AI in India.
Infosys Co-Founder Narayana Murthy Shares Views on India’s Tech Sector
Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy shared his views on India’s tech sector hopping on the AI curry train. He slammed India for hyping it while lacking substance. Speaking at the TiECon Mumbai 2025, the billionaire techpreneur stated, "I find that most of the so-called AI, I see, is silly and old programming."
Remember when Sam Altman was chided for his remark over India’s aptitude in developing Gen AI amid the Chinese AI DeepSeek’s surge? During his 2023 India sojourn, the OpenAI founder stated that it was hopeless for India “to compete with us.” He later clarified how it was taken out of context. In his recent India visit, he even hailed the country’s appetite for all things AI.
India's AI Development Lagging Behind Global Benchmarks
Despite the hype, India seems decades away from producing an AI deliverable that is at par with the global benchmarks set by the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Chinese AI DeepSeek, and the like. In his speech, Mr Murthy further added, "I think somehow it has become fashionable in India to talk of AI (for everything). I have seen several normal ordinary programs touted as AI."
Clarifying What AI Really Is
The father-in-law to former British PM Rishi Sunak continued explaining what exactly AI is. "There are two fundamental principles in AI. One, machine learning, which is a large-scale correlation. Therefore, it helps you, based on a large amount of data, predict. That is simple machine learning. The second is what is called deep learning. Deep learning imitates how the human brain works." He added, "Unsupervised algorithms that use deep learning and neural networks are the ones that have much greater potential to do things that will mimic human beings better and better. But what I am seeing being called AI is silly, old programs."
Future of Indian IT Industry
Will the Indian IT industry rise to the occasion and build an indie LLM from scratch? Will the developers create one with ethical integrity and not sweep data and plagiarize content from the internet (like others do)? Infosys co-founder, NR Narayana Murthy warned against what he described as 'exaggerated' claims about artificial intelligence (AI) in India, stating that poverty can be tackled by innovation and job creation and not by freebies.