India Today AI Summit 2026: Vishal Sikka says talk of AGI is nonsense because AI is just a tool
India Today
Vishal Sikka, founder and CEO of Vianai, discussed how the AI landscape has changed over the years. Sikka also talked about the need for government regulation in AI. He was also part of Infosys' initial AI plans a decade ago.
Vianai founder and CEO, Vishal Sikka pursued a PhD in AI way back in 1996. During the India Today AI Summit 2026, Sikka discussed how the AI landscape transformed over the years, and even now AI remains a tool for productivity.
In the session titled, “Can India win the AI race,” Vishal Sikka made it clear that AI is quite powerful when put into action correctly, with human “vigour.” He said, “AI is not a friend. It is a tool it is unbelievably powerful.”
However, the former Infosys CEO reckoned that we should stop the discussion over AGI – artificial general intelligence – a state where AI starts thinking like humans – and instead focus on using it as a tool for knowledge and repetitive tasks. He said, “The whole thing about AGI, and this is all nonsense, that we should abandon that.”
During his time at Infosys, Vishal Sikka played a role in the company’s early endeavours in AI. In 2015, Infosys invested $3 million in OpenAI, a decision taken by Sikka. He said, “The trajectory was kind of clear, where this was headed. We had to have an AI platform that we could use. So here was Sam [Altman] who was looking to build [AI] system.”
Apart from the investment in OpenAI, Vishal Sikka also revealed that Infosys tried to build its own platform. He explained, “We built our own platform back then. We had a large collection of efforts that we were doing.”
Deepfakes are flooding the internet, and it is becoming difficult for users to identify AI-generated content online. Vishal Sikka believes that regulation in the AI space should be a necessity, comparing it to regulations in areas such as construction.
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