Infosys Co-founder Narayana Murthy said that his productivity has increased since he started using the Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT to outline his lectures.
The 78-year-old tech pioneer said that he uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 to help draft his speeches that once took him 25-30 hours, increasing his productivity fivefold.
Murthy told Moneycontrol that he takes things seriously and used to invest hours working on his speeches. “There must be a theme, a sub-theme; they must be interrelated. At the end, there must be a strong message, all of that,” he said.
He credited his son, Rohan Murthy, for introducing him to the AI tool that has been gaining popularity for some time. He further added, “In a matter of five hours, I could improve the draft. In other words, I improved my own productivity by as much as five times”.
These comments by Murthy are in tune with his previous remarks that AI is more of an augmentative tool than a replacement tool. For him, this not only boosts one’s personal productivity but also hints at the transformative power of AI in the broader tech industry. Murthy believes that Indian IT firms can capitalise on generative AI to reduce errors, accelerate coding, and enhance turnaround times.
His remarks on ChatGPT came while announcing that Murthy’s family investment office – Catamaran, has opened a scholarship at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, blending equity index with fixed income investments to assist the MBA topper with an inflation-protected scholarship, every year for 20 years.
Will AI take up jobs?
“The real smartness lies in defining the requirement accurately. That’s what my son told me – if you don’t ask the right question, you won’t get the right answer,” Murthy said.
He drew a parallel between today’s AI developments and Britain’s banking sector in the 1970s, when the introduction of computers was initially met with resistance from unions.
Murthy recalled how a breakthrough occurred when experts met with union leaders and explained that computers would improve productivity, allowing employees to finish their work by 5 pm and spend more time with their families. Since then, employment in the UK and US banking sectors has expanded significantly, multiplied by 40 to 50 times.
He noted that our programmers and analysts will soon be equipped to address complex and precise requirements and challenging problems, reiterating his previous remarks that AI cannot replace jobs.
