"AI Becomes Master Or Servant": Mastercard Chairman Rajnish Kumar On NDTV

Rajnish Kumar, the Chairman of Mastercard, on Monday called Artificial Intelligence (AI) a "tool to augment brain power" and said that it can either become a master or a servant - the real danger posing with the former.

Speaking at NDTV's 'Emerging Business- Delhi Chapter Conclave', Mr Kumar said that AI must be treated as an agent.

"AI is a tool. There is human intelligence and then there is AI. Treat AI as an agent...Instead of a human, there is an agent. Based on whatever it has been taught, and its own capability to learn, AI can be used in any field - health, education, banking. It is about combining Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence," he said.

According to Mr Kumar, AI is the fourth industrial revolution.

"There will be a shift in jobs. When we went from computerisation in banks, there was a concern and resistance from employees that it would take away their jobs. Similarly, this time, some jobs might come down, but the industry goes up. In the industry as a whole, the number of people has not gone down. Today, if people were to do manual work, the industry or banks would not have grown," he said.

Mu Kumar added, "I have always believed the idea that when the time comes, you can't stop it. Jobs may go in different directions. In manufacturing, a job that eight welders would do, today robots are doing a good job. So you can't prevent it. AI becomes the master or the servant. The real danger is that it should not become a master."

On India adopting advanced technology, Mr Kumar said he is very proud as an Indian.

"We are very proud of what India has achieved in adopting technology, especially in the payments and banking business. Technology is for everyone. Nobody is untouched. If anyone thinks they can survive without technology, it will be very difficult," Mr Kumar said.

"I joined SBI in 1980. It was all manual, everything. The real work in digitisation adoption started when the Indian economy opened up in 1991. Before that, technology existed but more in back office operations. Now, UPI has become a game-changer and a competitor to other networks," he added.

Mr Kumar, who has served as the former chairperson of the State Bank of India (SBI), said that the whole idea of technology is to bring the cost of operations down.

"Today, SBI serves 50 crore customers. How can you do that if you don't have technology?. The same applies to MSMEs," he said.

On Mastercard, Mr Kumar said that they have access to consumer behaviour, which enables them to help prevent and detect fraud.

"Normally, we associate Mastercard with payment. But the bigger power is the capability to study patterns, use powerful data analytics, where fraud can be prevented, protected, and identity theft can be prevented. If someone does a payment through Mastercard overseas in a suspicious territory, you immediately get an alert. There is a power of data analytics working behind it," he said.