Bhubaneswar: Progress and evolution of technology is inevitable. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one such change but it must be harnessed to aid and not supercede human beings, suggested speakers at fourth edition of Sambad CEO Conclave here yesterday. 

Participating at a panel discussion titled "Greener with AI: How smart technology is powering sustainable industries, speakers Rupa Jha (CEO and co-founder of Collective Newsroom BBC) and Vishal Vithal Kamath (Executive Director of Kamath Hotels Ltd) opined that AI, like any other technological change, comes with its fair share of benefits and shortcomings and human intervention is a must for its judicious use. 

Elaborating on use of AI in media industry, Jha said," Technological change is a constant. There'll always be innovations and so will disruptions. But disruption is essential to avoid stagnation. It is unavoidable to engage with this new technology but we need not be scared. AI is like Aladdin's Genie. If human beings have created Artificial Intelligence, they can come up with ways to control and use it ethically."

Jha went on to stress that the main threat of AI in journalism is creating synthetic news and its damaging impact on democracy. "Today, fake news can be generated with AI tools. If the people consuming such information are not literate and cannot differentiate between AI-generated and original content, media has a bigger responsibility to ensure that credibility of journalism is not compromised. AI will become a threat if there is no ethical framework to use it. Technological advance is necessary. Today, it is AI. Tomorrow, it will be something else. So we cannot let it control or rule us. Human intervention must supercede and prevail in the face of any invention," she added. 

Shedding light on the use of AI in the hospitality industry, Kamath said it is a major misconception that Artificial Intelligence is a novel innovation. "AI has been in use since many years. The only difference is that earlier its use was confined to the backend of big software companies while now it is consumer-driven. Today, common man has the power of content creation with AI which makes real and fake content indistinguishable. That is where the challenge lies," the hospitality leader said. 

He expounded that AI has benfitted the hospitality industry in myriad ways by aiding integration of many funnels and helping companies save money but that does not discount the role of humans. "When we ran AI in our industry's accounting process, technicvally 10-12 people became redundant. But we found ways to train them in alternate skills and roles. So AI did not replace jobs but it sure helped us in cost-cutting," he clarified.

Kamath also stated that AI can help erase human errors or plug leakages in various segments. "In current times, business means complaince and AI is a huge help when it comes to processing things like data collection, GST returns and avoiding penalty, etc. Howevever, it is imperative to note that AI is not the solution to our problems. It is a tool to figure out solutions and that's where we are in charge. Artificial intelligence must be converted to applied intelligence and it needs a delicate balance of experienced and young minds to operate it," he opined.

Comparing AI's role in media and hospitality sectors, Jha said its use in the latter is more process-oriented. But media is much more dependent on human instincts and AI needs to be used in a more controlled and responsible manner so that people do not lose trust on information, she added.