AI Disruption Is Exponential, Businesses Need A Margin Of Safety: HDFC AMC's Navneet Munot

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as one of the biggest disruptive technologies, with its impact likely to extend well beyond technology companies and reshape businesses and society, according to Navneet Munot, MD & CEO, HDFC AMC.

“AI is surely quite a disruptive technology. It will impact businesses, it will impact society. There is nobody who will remain insulated from the longer-term impact that it will have,” Munot said NDTV Profit Townhall on Monday, September 7.

According to Munot, one of the biggest challenges in assessing AI's impact is that the pace of change is exponential rather than linear. While businesses and individuals tend to think in a linear fashion, the development and adoption of AI could result in changes that are difficult to visualise over a three- to five-year period.

“This is one of the most exponential changes which we have seen. The change is exponential and not linear,” he said, adding that the human brain naturally tends to think linearly.

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This makes it difficult for investors and businesses to accurately assess where AI could take industries in the coming years. Munot believes companies therefore need to build a margin of safety into their business strategies to prepare for potentially deep disruption.

The key question, he said, is whether companies will merely adopt AI or use it to strengthen their competitive moat.

“Whether the business has it in them that they can not only be a good adopter, but will actually strengthen the comparative moat that they have,” Munot said.

He also highlighted cybersecurity as one of the major opportunities that could emerge from the AI revolution. As AI adoption accelerates, the scale and sophistication of cyber risks could increase, creating significant demand for cybersecurity solutions.

This raises an important question for India's technology sector: Can Indian IT companies leverage the growing cybersecurity opportunity and emerge as beneficiaries of AI-led disruption, rather than being disrupted by it?

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