“AI will disrupt everything”

AICTE had earlier announced observing 2025 as the ‘Year of Artificial Intelligence’. What was the basic premise behind this initiative?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one such technology which is going to disrupt everything. Today, it is not just a future technology; it has already become a reality and will stay with us. But please remember, when the computer era began in the 1970s and ’80s, we had seen street demonstrations in many countries with protestors saying that there would be massive job losses. How computers helped in enhancing our work efficiency, we all know. Similarly, if an individual decides to embrace this technology, he will become more capable professionally, though there is no denying the fact that AI is going to disrupt every field, including education.

It was late last year that we decided to observe 2025 as the ‘Year of Artificial Intelligence.’ AICTE supervises all kinds of institutes – engineering, management and others. We would like all of them to get adjusted to the new modalities emerging from this technology in the field of education. We want to make everybody in the higher education value chain aware that they need to change the way they teach. Today, the scene is such that if you give a coding assignment to a student, he will ask ChatGPT to do it. So, we want to put more emphasis on experiential learning. This kind of change cannot happen overnight. That is why we declared 2025 as the year of AI, under which we have been organising workshops, seminars, etc. For your information, AICTE has been quite proactive in the area of the adoption of AI. In 2017-18, we had declared a tech program in AI and Data Science, which large institutes had included in their curriculum.

Are you in the process of setting up any guidelines on this?

Three reports have already been brought up on this. One of them was done by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in 2024. But it is not a guideline. It talks about how AI is going to create disruption and pose challenges for different sectors, and how we deal with this. We had also constituted a committee of top experts to suggest ways for academia to deal with this challenge. There are suggestions vis-à-vis how exams should be conducted, the transformation of classroom teaching, handing over assignments to students, etc.

There have been reports in the recent past raising questions over the capability of the existing faculties to embrace AI…

I do not agree with this. We have floated several programmes. One is the Centre for Excellence in Engineering Education (CEEE). PRACTICE is another major initiative we have started in several engineering institutions to upskill our teachers in the new era of emerging technologies. It’s not only AI – there is robotics and mechatronics too, which will be embedded in every engineering course. Even in business management and hotel management, it will have an impact.

You probably have 300 management institutes offering the PGDM course under your wings. Have they shown agility in embracing AI?

We have only a small number of management institutions offering PGDM. But those that we have are aligning with the broader changes and are offering new courses in MBA and PG Diploma in AI and data science integrated with management. Data analytics programmes have been created. They have been given a lot of flexibility in creating their own curriculum. They are innovating a lot vis-à-vis fintech, data analytics, and management principles, for the new era.

Nobody is doubting the inevitability of adopting AI. But everybody seems to be confused about what kind of jobs it will wipe out and what new opportunities it will create for humans. Quite obviously, the students doing higher studies are concerned about their future. Your take on this…

It is a proven fact that AI will do a lot of jobs much better than human beings. Coming back to your question – should we be concerned? Look, this is a tool we have created for our benefit. How can it overtake us? Definitely, any technology can be misused. What we have to see is how AI can bring societal changes and how it is going to help us. Every sector will need to change, and we will embrace it much better than we have done when we encountered any major transformation in the past. This time, we are not noticing street protests against it. It is true that a lot of mundane jobs will vanish. But people with experiential learning will have more opportunities. The existing working force – will they opt to vanish or upgrade their skills and align with something whose time has come, we have to see. We don’t have a choice but to embrace this technology. But, at the same time, we should not be scared of it. It will be interspersed with our regular activities eventually. And, we should prepare our young generation for it.

You are in the thick of it. When you look at some of the top-ranked international institutes and compare them in making adjustments with the AI era and what our own best are doing, what difference do you find?

The excellence on this front is the function of infrastructure and resources. Infrastructure is computing and energy, and resources are technology (like the chip, which can trigger a quantum effect that we have begun talking about). Developed countries are definitely ahead – 80 per cent of technology is with the US and a substantial remaining chunk with China. Our strength lies in the human capital that understands this technology. But the number of older people who understand AI is quite small. They may not be exposed to large language modules, where technology is disrupting beyond your imagination. Deep science is also changing. The Ministry of Electronics is organising the AI Impact Summit in February 2026. And there are seven themes, and one of them would be human capital, which I am heading. We have been asked because the way we are planning and training people, we may well be ahead of many countries. But we need high computing power, either on the cloud or anywhere else, which we don’t have. They are energy guzzlers. We need a collaborative approach of all stakeholders to change the scene.