Nandan Nilekani flags AI backlash risk

Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani on Thursday said the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence could trigger a backlash unless its benefits are widely diffused and demonstrably useful to society, and the resentment among white-collar workers could potentially derail the technology’s progress.

At a fireside chat with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the AI Impact Summit 2026, the Infosys co-founder said there is currently both a “race to the top” and a “race to the bottom” in AI development, with the latter moving faster and stressed that stakeholders must accelerate efforts to ensure AI is applied for meaningful public good.

“I think all of us who have a stake in AI being useful to humanity have to accelerate and redouble our efforts to make the diffusion happen. Otherwise, the consequences are going to be very, very difficult, because there’s going to be a backlash,” Nilekani said.

He noted that AI’s most visible outcomes, like creating deep fakes, raising the price of your power bill, or similar other things that are happening, could turn public sentiment against it.

“The resentment of the blue-collar worker led to the train wreck of globalisation. The resentment of the white-collar worker is going to lead to the train wreck of AI. So, I think we really have to work very hard to show profound, useful cases of AI,” Nilekani said.

He said that helping technology reach a billion people is a different game, and India has experience in implementing Aadhar, UPI and implementing the largest financial inclusion system.

“We learned that diffusion is a technique. It’s both an art and a science. It involves institutions, it involves policymaking, negotiations, dealing with incumbents, dealing with newcomers, and strategies for execution. So the whole trust buildings, the whole host of things.

“I think if all the investments in AI are going to deliver the value to society, not just to individuals, we’ll have to look at diffusion pathways, to take this to everyone. And I think India will lead on that. That’s why I have always been saying that India should focus on becoming the use case capital of the world,” Nilekani said.

Asked what needs to be done to achieve the expected economic acceleration due to AI usage, Nilekani said the focus has to be on inclusion; this AI has to carry everybody.  “Everybody must feel it. Everybody must benefit from it. And that’s why I think the language is very important.

We want people to be able to speak to the computer in their language, in their dialect, mixing English, Hindi, and Tamil. And then I think of making agents work for people. I think if you can make agents work for people, then it means more inclusion,” Nilekani said.

Amodei, in his comments, had said the benefits of AI in the Global South are more pronounced than anywhere else in the world, emphasising that India’s considerable technical expertise and eagerness to adopt AI present significant economic growth potential.

Amodei said that while AI adoption has the potential to boost growth, we need to make sure that AI systems are safe and predictable and autonomously behave in a way that’s under human control.